A magnificent work of art— an indescribable evil
■
"Beyond,
in the garden behind the wall, was a fountain, splashing gently. And in the center
of that fountain, two nudes, a mother and child. ■ "A mother and
child, marvelously intertwined, intricately wrought. God, the detail of the
woman! Head slightly turned, eyes just widening with the infinitesimal
beginning of surprise as she looked—at what?
■
"Suddenly,
he heard the rustle behind him, as of robes, smelled an indescribable scent,
heard a sound that could only have been a multiple hissing—and though he knew
he mustn't, he turned slowly. ■ "And looked."
From
"Island of Fear"
ISLAND OF FEAR
and Other Science
Fiction Stories
is an original collection of stories
by William Sambrot,
many of which have
appeared in
the Saturday Evening Post
Are there paperbound books you want but
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ISLAND OF FEAR
and Other Science Fiction Stories
WILLIAM SAMBROT
A
PERMABOOK EDITION published by POCKET BOOKS, INC. • NEW YORK
ISLAND OF FEAR
AND OTHER SCIENCE FICTION
STORIES
Permabook edition published May, 1963
1st printing................................ March, 1963
fTi
This original Permabook* edition is printed from brand-new plates
made from newly set, clear, easy-to-read type.
Permabook editions are published by Pocket Books, Inc., and
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♦Trademarks of Pocket Books, Inc., 630
Fifth Avenue, New York 20, N.Y.,
In the United States and
other countries.
Copyright, ©,
1963, by William Sambrot. All rights reserved. Published by Pocket Books, Inc.,
New York, and on the same day in Canada by Pocket Books of Canada, Ltd.,
Montreal.
Printed in the U.S.A.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND COPYRIGHT NOTICES
The stories in this volume are copyrighted as
specified below:
Space
Secret: Copyright, ©,
1959, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published in The
Saturday Evening Post.
A Distant Shrine: Copyright, ©, 1961, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published under the title ''Cathedral of Mars" in The Saturday Evening Post.
Island of Fear: Copyright, ©,
1958, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published in The
Saturday Evening Post.
Creature
of the Snows: Copyright, ©,
1960, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published in The
Saturday Evening Post.
Nine
Days to Die: Copyright, ©,
1960, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published in The
Saturday Evening Post.
Invasion:
Copyright, ©,
1955, by The Curtis Publishing Company. First
published in The
Saturday Evening Post.
Control
Somnambule: Copyright, ©, 1962, by William Sam-brot. First
published in Playboy.
The
Secret of the Terrible Titans: Copyright, ©, 1959, by William Sambrot. First
published under the title 'Toot-ball Majors at Pacific U." in Cosmopolitan.
Report
to the People: Copyright, 1933, by William Sambrot.
First published in Bluebook.
Deadly
Decision: Copyright, ©,
1958, by William Sambrot. First published in Extension.
The
Man Who Knew: Copyright, ©,
1957, by William Sambrot. First published in Tiger.
Cathartic:
Copyright, ©,
1957, by William Sambrot. First published in Satellite Science Fiction.
A
Son of Eve: Copyright, ©,
1959, by William Sambrot. First published in MR. Magazine.
Contents
1.
Space
Secret................................................. ................ 1
2.
Control
Somnambule................................. .................. 8
3.
A
Distant Shrine......................................... .............. 26
4.
Island
of Fear............................................... .............. 39
5.
Creature
of the Snows................................ .............. 52
6.
Nine
Days to Die......................................... .............. 66
7.
The
Invasion of the Terrible Titans . 86
8.
Invasion.................................................. ......................... 93
9.
Report
to the People................................... 103
10.
Deadly
Decision......................................... .......... 115
11.
The
Man Who Knew.................................. .......... 129
12.
Cathartic...................................................... .......... 140
13.
The
Second Experiment ..... 145
14.
A
Son of Eve................................................ .......... 160
Space Secret
I am sending this
report by special courier; I am personally unable to deliver it, because I wish to be on hand to forestall any possible
repercussions which might yet arise from the charges made by Dr. John Lassiter,
of the Rand Corporation, that the original video tapes taken by the successful
American moon rocket yesterday had been stolen during the night and a substitute
put in their place.
- As you know, the successful moon shot was
made with a rocket that carried an electronic camera, operating with
photoelectric cells which transmitted pictures onto electronically sensitized
tape. The rocket made the run to the moon and swung around, photographing the
far side which had never been seen from earth. Then continuing on around,
executing a vast figure eight, the rocket shot back toward earth, circled it
and finally made a successful reentry into the Pacific Ocean.
Although
it was anticipated that the far side of the moon was in no way different from
the near side, the prestige of being the first to have taken close-up pictures
of it was enormous. And quite naturally the Air Force made every effort, once
the nose cone was recovered, to keep the video tapes secret. They were rushed
by special jet to the research and development building in Santa Monica known
l
as
Rand Corporation. There they were processed by Dr. Lassiter.
After
the tapes were processed, apparently Lassiter had viewed them privately (a
breach of security). What he saw caused him to send urgent summonses to the top
echelons of the Air Force and Rand Corporation. I was able, because of my
position at Rand, to be among the four or five who were permitted to view the
second showing.
John
Lassiter, Ph.D., a theoretical physicist, topflight mathematician and
electronic expert, is in his early forties, tall, rather thin, with penetrating
eyes. He is a standout, intellectually, in a building full of geniuses. Rand Corporation, the Air Force's research and development center
in Santa Monica, consists of about eight hundred brilliant people: scientists,
economists, mathematicians, physicists, cybernetics and electronic experts and
the like. Also, they have a list of another two hundred and fifty
consultants on the outside on whom they draw from time to time for expert
advice.
For
the record: The business of Rand Corporation is that of evaluating any given
idea and projecting its inherent possibilities into the future. They have come
very close on a great many occasions. For example: Working from known data
concerning the U.S.S.R.'s rocket potential, they accurately forecast the first
Sputnik—an event of some importance, you will agree.
We
assembled in the viewing room in the Rand building, with Air Force police
outside the door and scattered about throughout the entire building and
grounds. Security was complete.
Before
he showed the tapes, Lassiter made an impromptu speech which I consider well
worth repeating:
"Gentlemen," he said quietly,
"history has always interested me. Not the history of the textbooks but
the history of legends, of primitive peoples; the stories handed down through
the millenniums. And among these, without fail, in any civilization, we come
across a strangely similar belief—a legend of gods who descended from the sky
to walk the earth like men."
He
held up a hand, ticking off on his fingers as he talked. "On the American
continent we have the Mayans, the Aztecs, with their beliefs that bearded white
gods would once more come back—gods who taught them their science, their
mathematics, how to smelt ore, cut rocks, gods who came from the sky. And there
are the Polynesians, surrounded by the vast Pacific, who worship the redheaded
bearded white god who landed on Easter Island—the 'Eye to Heaven,' as they call
it. Everywhere throughout the world primitive men lifted their eyes to the
skies for salvation, longing for the return of those kindly, brilliant
far-travelers whose science so far outstripped their own."
He
paused. "The pattern continues down to our time. Only now it appears to be
one of watching—and waiting. But I won't bore you with flying saucers or Fortian proofs of visitors from other worlds. We have
here"—he touched the kinescope—"our own proof; proof that our
planetary system teems with life, with science that is to our atomic piles what
they are to bonfires; proof that we are not alone, not lost in the immensity of
the infinite universe. We are not alone—and here's the proof in living
color"—he became suddenly wry—"as they say on ail the
networks."
He switched on the
kinescope.
Instantly
the screen came alive, showing the brilliant blue-black velvet of outer space,
the stars, glowing in colors seen only outside the earth's atmosphere: greens,
yellows, fiery reds, icy blues, burning steadily without a flicker. The men in
the room gasped. The rocket was approaching the moon, closer and closer, the
chilling whites and dead blacks looming closer and clearer.
"Now,"
Lassiter whispered. "Now you'll see. It's going to the far side—the side
never before seen by man."
The
scene on the screen moved along. Formidable mountains; sheer,
fantastic, slender needle spires, defying even the faint gravity of the moon.
Immense pits, filled with the rubble of ancient disasters. More pits, more
mountains, slashing crazy patterns of eye-hurting light and utter black of shadow without depth—and slowly, slowly, the
ground moved under the rocket until, visible faintly, the swollen,
greenish-blue rim of earth appeared off in space. The rocket began leaving the
moon and approaching the earth again. The tape came to an end. The lights came
up. We turned as one and stared at Lassiter.
He
was seated, motionless, eyes unblinking, only his large, sensitive hands
tightly clenched. He stared at the screen.
"It's beautiful," I said, "but
no more so than we'd expected. Other than the prestige of having been first—
well, really, Lassiter, the far side is no different from the side we've seen
since the beginning of time."
"It's
not the same!" He stood up, and his voice was a terrible broken shout in
the soundproof room. "That's
not the tapé
I saw last night!"
There
was an immediate stir in the room, and some of the Air Force people looked
alarmed.
"Listen
to me! Please!" He stood up, his face gray, his
eyes stricken, like a man who has seen glory suddenly leave him forever.
"Listen—"
We
quieted. Already I heard one of the Air Force officers muttering something
about "Crazy as a hoot owl—"
"Last
night," Lassiter began, pointing to the screen, "last night on that
screen—" His voice trembled
slightly, as though in despair at ever being able to convey what he'd seen.
"How can I begin to explain what I saw?" he whispered. We sat
tensely, watching, listening. "How can I tell of the buildings there; the
colors; the smoothly flowing lines of architecture, slim, airy, yet full of
strength? Serene, mature. Yes, that's it—mature.
Water, trees, parks. And the spaceships."
He
paused, and when he repeated it, it was more a groan than a phrase. "The spaceships. One of them was taking off. Rising straight up, gently, swiftly, like a
huge iridescent bubble. Light, incomparably lovely—" His voice was suddenly subdued. "They have a source
of power so far beyond us. So far beyond us—"
An
Air Force man came to his feet. "Are you telling us that someone has had
access to this room during the night and switched tapes on us?"
Lassiter
turned and looked at him, his eyes peculiarly inward-looking. "Yes,"
he said.
"And
the . . . the original tapes showed a ...
a civilization on the other side of the moon?" There
was frank disbelief in the officer's voice.
"A
civilization compared to which we're still savages crouching over a fire in a
cave," he said.
The
room was a hubbub of noise. I stood up and shouted for silence. When I got it,
I looked at Lassiter. "Isn't the manufacture of that electronic tape a
Rand Corporation top-secret process?"
He nodded. His mind was
obviously far away.
"Who could possibly
duplicate that process, then use the tape to take these obviously authentic
shots of the moon approach, steal the original and substitute the
duplicates—and all in one night?"
There
was a murmur in the room, subdued laughter even.
Lassiter
looked at me, and suddenly his eyes became keen, blazing with that truly great
intelligence of his. "The same ones who are living on
the other side of our moon."
There was a sudden silence
in the room.
His
glance swept us. "They're here—in this building. They switched the tapes.
I repeat: The tapes you saw just now are not the ones I saw last night. And yet
this substitute is authentic. // shows an actual moon-rocket approach"
"Whom
do you suspect—Martians?" I said gently, giving the others in the room a
significant look. They looked back, nodding slightly. One of the officers
scribbled a hasty note and went to the door.
"Call
them Martians if you wish," Lassiter said softly. "Those ancient ones
who visited here so many millenniums ago, who out of pity or kindness—or
maturity—taught the savages they found here the rudiments of civilization. Those far-travelers who still watch—and wait."
"You
can't be serious, Lassiter," one of the Rand men said unhappily.
"Even if there were such space people, why would they try to keep us in
ignorance?"
"Because
we're still savages!" he shouted. "Clever,
murderous children, developing our brains, our skills, but never our emotions.
How could they permit us to join them, the society of other worlds, until we
achieve adulthood—genuine maturity? That's why they switched these films—so we
couldn't really know"
He said more. Much more.
He pointed out the consistent pattern of failures that had harassed man's
burgeoning space hopes. Failures he now understood to be deliberate stumbling
blocks placed in mankind's path as it clawed—prematurely—for the stars.
An
altogether remarkable synthesis.
After
exhaustive chemical analysis of the tape, it was proved to be of the same
composition as stock still on the lab's shelves, which of necessity ruled out
its being a substitute. After a few more reruns of the tape, the Air Force
announced itself as well pleased with the brilliant success of the moon shot.
Lassiter,
it was decided, had suffered a mental collapse because of overwork and the
disappointment at discovering that the other side of the moon was no different
from the side the earth had always seen. He is, as of this writing, undergoing
a series of psychiatric examinations which ought to disclose (bat in all
likelihood won't) that he is more sane than most of mankind. He is a remarkable
individual, and I suggest that he be placed on the list of those to be watched
most closely in the future.
Also,
I recommend that steps be taken hereafter to intercept all camera-bearing
rockets from earth while in flight and prepared films or tapes substituted,
thus avoiding another untoward incident such as developed here.
For
the archives: Enclosed,
herewith, is the original video tape which the U.S. moon rocket took of our
lunar base. Though I've made the journey from earth to moon and back
innumerable times, I found Lassiter's description of this tape strangely
moving. Especially his remark concerning the rather good shot
of my own ship rising from the moon as I left with the substitute tape last
night. He is right; it does indeed resemble an iridescent bubble.
Control Somnambule
To: From: Subject:
Classified;
General
James Kearny, Directorate, A.F.L Amos P. Fineman,
M.D. Statements made while under deep hypnosis by Captain Paul Davenport, Project Apollo astronaut, and an evaluation thereof.
For your eyes only.
Dear Jim:
Herewith,
as I promised you, a summary of the events that occurred during and after
"Operation Moonshot" and my verbatim report
of the strange statements made under deep hypnosis by Captain Paul Davenport,
the astronaut who made our first successful circumlunar orbit and return last
week.
Before
I go into it, I do want to remind you of the trust and confidence Air Force
Intelligence has shown in me in the past, by way of preparing you for some
conclusions later.
After
your urgent summons, I was briefed at Patrick AFB by Colonel Friend, project
co-ordinator. He told me that the shot was made in
total secrecy. Even Captain Davenport didn't know that he'd been selected to
ride the bird until two hours before final countdown. When he was told, he was
understandably elated; competition
8
among the astronauts was keen to be the first to
make the deep-space flight around the moon and back.
Vehicle,
as you know, was the Saturn C-l, with high-energy propellant second stage and
steerable Centaur last stage. The capsule was a modified three-man re-entry
vehicle command module, with the extra space taken up by an over-size
stop-and-start solid-fuel rocket engine. All checked out perfectly during the
forty-eight hour countdown. During the final countdown, when Davenport was
being strapped into the contour chair in the capsule, he showed no symptoms of
undue strain. He completed his check-off list with calm precision.
Launching
went according to schedule and the Saturn lifted off smoothly. The shot was
programmed to make a high-speed run to the moon—something under thirty-four
hours. Synergic ascent was to the southeast, out over the so-called Capetown Anomaly, the known gap in the V.A. radiation belt.
As the capsule approached the moon at high speed, it would reverse itself,
retro-rockets fired to slow it enough to enable it to slip into a tight orbit
about the moon. As it began its transit of the far side, it would release a
brilliant sodium-vapor flare visible on earth. Transit of far
side to take about fifty-one minutes. As it again came into earth view,
it was to release a second flare, after which full thrust would be applied by
the solid-fuel engine and the capsule would begin its sixty-hour journey back
to earth and re-entry.
All stages functioned as planned; signals
came in loud and clear, including those checking the vital life-support system
of the capsule. Every tracking station on earth followed it; the powerful
radio-telescope at Sugar Grove locked on the capsule's special signal which
would only cease for the fifty-one minutes during which the capsule would be on
the far side of the moon.
Exactly
as programmed, thirty-four hours, fourteen minutes after all-burnt, the
brilliant flare was seen on earth, and Davenport's calm voice, delayed two
seconds by distance, announced he was beginning transit of the far side of the
moon, relaying technical information about TV cameras, electronic image-storers, etc. His voice faded and was silent for forty-nine
minutes, twenty seconds, and then he came on again, still calm, loud and clear:
"I have earth in sight. Firing flare." And
the brilliant pinpoint of light was clearly visible in all telescopes.
"Full thrust." His voice came across cislunar space.
"Hello, you blue, beautiful old—"
And at that instant his voice cut off. Simultaneously, all life-support system telemetering data ceased sending. His signal vanished from
both the powerful Sugar Grove telescope and the Jodrell
Bank receiver in England. Every device aboard the big capsule which had been
sending smoothly, efficiently, stopped abruptly.
Every
effort to contact the capsule failed. Various emergency devices were triggered,
including additional powerful flares stored in the capsule's skin. No results.
The thought of the million-to-one accident—meteor collision—was uppermost in
all minds. It would take a total and instantaneous disintegration of the
capsule to destroy every emergency sender built into it.
All
tracking stations were kept on the alert. Until the sixty hours planned for the
return journey were over, there was no thought of giving up.
And
suddenly, five hours and fifty-four minutes after the capsule's disappearance,
it began sending loud and clear; its pip was once again picked up by the Sugar
Grove
telescope, and Davenport's voice finished the sentence
which had abruptly been cut off nearly six hours ago: "Hello, you blue,
beautiful old earth; here I come."
The tapes clicked over smoothly, efficiently;
the instruments recording perfectly, every one of them taking up where they'd
left off five hours and fifty-four minutes earlier.
Questions were immediately put to
Davenport—and it was then the puzzle deepened. He insisted there'd been no
interruption whatsoever, that the return flight was exactly on schedule. He
expressed astonishment when told he'd disappeared completely for nearly six
hours. He could not explain the disappearance of the capsule from all tracking
stations or what had occurred during those lost six hours when his own voice
had been silent.
Approaching
earth sixty hours later, Davenport quietly announced he was making the
delicately precise maneuvers for slipping into the re-entry corridor, and
exactly as programmed, the big capsule was seen drifting down well within the
impact area in the South Atlantic.
Davenport
and the capsule were snatched from the ocean by 'copter, deposited aboard a
carrier, from which they were flown by special jet to Patrick AFB.
Again
Davenport insisted that at no time had he ceased sending, nor had he missed any
contact from Earth. He had slept some hours—but long after the mysterious disappearance
had been reported. The instruments and tapes aboard the capsule corroborated
Davenport's firm denial that anything had gone wrong. They all showed uninterrupted
identical data: speeds, times, orientation in space, a continuous functioning
of the UHF tracking signal—no break whatsoever in any of the life-support
systems.
A capsule, moving at speed, does not suddenly
cease sending and disappear from every tracking station on earth and just as
suddenly reappear—all
unknown to its occupant—without
good and sound reason. A persistent and patient survey of all the telemetered data finally disclosed that the capsule had
undergone an intense "storm" of highly-charged subatomic particles—of
what sort, unknown. A storm of this magnitude must have existed as a long band
stretching between the moon and earth.
Furthermore,
the capsule had apparently drifted within this enormous ribbon of
high-intensity magnetic forces for the exact length of time the capsule had
disappeared from the tracking scopes, dropping out of it six hours later.
It
was thought that radar beams and radio signals must have simply been
"bent" around this field and, instead of bouncing back to disclose a
blip, would have gone on uninterrupted, thereby causing the observers to
believe that the capsule was not there.
A field of this intensity would also, of
course, cause instantaneous stoppage of all electrical instruments—including
that most sensitive electrical instrument of all, Davenport's brain.
This somewhat tenuous theory is now the
officially accepted explanation of the dramatic disappearance and reappearance
of America's first successful manned orbit of the moon.
However,
it was an alert film technician, Harry Wyckoff, who discovered the curious
discrepancy which led to my being called into the case. As you know, within the
manned capsule, and focused so as to cover the entire capsule interior, there
is a spring-operated, high-speed microminiature
camera, geared to take films at certain intervals in order to record the
various body positions the astronaut might assume under zero gravity
conditions.
In
developing this film, Wyckoff noted what appeared to be a discontinuity in the
series of tracks which were placed on the edges of the film as correlating data
to be used in conjunction with other instrument readings. These tracks, instead
of continuing in even series, terminated with one set of co-ordinates and
abruptly started with another, much later, series.
He
ran the tiny film through a magnifier and immediately discovered that there had
been a break in the film, a break which had been spliced so expertly as to be
unnoticeable to the casual inspection.
Wyckoff
ran the film at an exceedingly slow speed and discovered that four of the tiny
frames showed not the bulky figure of Davenport floating in space but, rather,
an empty capsule interior. Four frames, just before the splice, which seemed to
indicate that for at least a short time Davenport had been absent from the
space capsule.
Obviously
this was impossible. A man encased in bulky spacesuit, dependent for his very
life on the umbilical cords tying him to his life-support system—such a man
does not disengage those cords, breach his sealed hatch and crawl out of a
capsule moving through a hard vacuum at speeds of many thousands of miles an
hour. And then, after all that, crawl back in, resealing his hatch—a job which
must be done by techs from outside—and
survive. No, no.
The
only solution appeared the obvious one—there'd been a mix-up. A double
exposure, either during camera-loading or after the camera had been off-loaded.
But both jobs had been done by Wyckoff. That film had been whole and unspliced prior to blast-off. It looked very much as if
someone had edited that film and missed those last four frames. But how? And—why? He shrugged it
off; the whole shot had been a weirdy. Nevertheless,
he did mention it to Colonel Friend, project co-ordinator,
a deeply worried man at the moment.
Colonel Friend viewed the film in slow
motion, stopping the camera on the four views of the empty capsule interior.
Several of the "umbilical cords," wires that led to Davenport's
body, were plainly visible, hanging loose, floating in the zero gravity of
outer space.
It was then the colonel requested that
Davenport be questioned under hypnosis in an attempt to discover what really
had occurred, two hundred thousand miles from earth, during those six hours of
silence.
Colonel
Friend's request was channeled through Rand Corporation, the Air Force's
research and development facility at Santa Monica, and through Rand (and your
good offices, Jim) I was contacted and asked to perform the deep hypnosis and
subsequent questioning of Davenport.
At
first glance Captain Paul Davenport didn't appear a promising subject for
hypnosis. About five feet ten inches tall, alert green eyes, he moved with the
poise of a fine athlete.
He
hadn't been told the reason for this hypnosis attempt—only that it was hoped
he'd have made some subconscious observations during his six-hour blackout
which might reveal themselves under hypnosis; observations which could be of
inestimable value to the astronauts to follow.
I
was surprised at the ease with which he slipped into a light trance. It seemed
to indicate that he'd undergone prior hypnosis, though I'd been told he never
had. A person once hypnotized achieves initial trance rather quickly.
Davenport
lay back on the couch, concentrating intently on the whirling spiral disk I
held before him, and within a few minutes he was in the very deepest trance
known as "somnambule." In this state
Davenport would actually relive and re-enact any incident in his past at my
bidding.
I
told Davenport he was back in the space capsule, preparing for final countdown.
Immediately he stretched out on the couch in the reclining position he assumed
within the capsule. In a conversational tone I then read the long list of items
to be checked off by an astronaut about to ride a spaceship into deep space.
And
quickly, eyes blank and indrawn, Davenport reached here, there, above him and
to the side, making twisting motions, snapping imaginary switches, turning
dials, reading instruments off to me, reliving, totally, the last moments prior
to launch.
"Fire!"
At
the moment of blast-off he sank down into the couch, jaw slack, eyes receding
deeper and deeper into his head. He actually flattened under the force of his
relived gravity pull of the Saturn's million and a half pounds of thrust. He
grimaced, groaning slightly, holding his abdomen.
"What is it,
Davenport?"
"Pain. Pressure hurts here." He touched his right abdomen.
Finally,
the g-pull eased; he resumed his normal reclining position, eyes flicking from
one imaginary instrument to another, speaking coolly, a look of growing elation
on his face. Suddenly a wide grin split his face. "A-okay," he
murmured. "Booster separated on course, on altitude." He listened to
an unheard voice, nodding. "It looks good."
"Captain Davenport—Paul," I said
quietly, "what's happening?"
Instantly
the elation dropped from his voice, and in the flat tones of the submerged
personality he said, "In synergic ascent above the tip of Africa and
heading for the hole. Altitude—"
I snapped my finger softly, and he ceased
speaking. "This is thirty-five hours later," I told him. "You
have transited the far side of the moon; have released the second flare. The
earth is coming into view again. What's happening now?"
Again he assumed the alert position, checking
his nonexistent instruments. "Full thrust," he said crisply. He
peered ahead, and grinned. "Hello, you blue, beautiful old—." He
froze, staring into space ahead of him, a surprised look on his face.
"What's
happening?" I said quickly.
"Gravity,"
he murmured. "I—I'm feeling gravity, and there's been an interruption from
Sunnyvale monitoring station—"
He stared before him, blinked hard, a look of utter disbelief on his face.
"No," he said. "No!"
"What do you see,
Davenport?" I snapped.
"It's
a—a ship. Dead ahead. As though I'm
tailing it. And now—" He
punched savagely at something in front of him.
"Engine," he
gasped. "Burping."
He waited, a look of helplessness on his face. "It's cut
out," he muttered, still staring ahead, as though through the capsule
window. "The engine's not firing. I'm moving up on it." His eyes
bulged. "There's a hatch opening— and—I'm going into it. The spaceship;—I'm inside it!"
He
waited, rigid, then slowly his head swiveled to one
side. "Don't open that hatch!" He was trying to roar, but it came out
a faint, breathless shout. He watched in horror as something—the hatch
apparently—was dropped out of the capsule. He closed his eyes, then snapped them open again. He suddenly lashed out,
slowly, awkwardly, as though retarded by a clumsy spacesuit. "Stay away— My oxygen!"
He
stiffened for a moment, as though having difficulty breathing; then slowly he
took a tentative breath, then another. Surprised, he breathed deeply.
"Air," he said. "There's air on this."
"Where are you,
Davenport?" I asked sofdy.
"Big
spaceship," he said. "Like a small hangar. Empty? No—those are
people?" This last questioningly.
"Describe them,"
I said sharply.
He
shook his head. Squinting his eyes as though peering
beyond a brilliant light. He put a hand up to shade his eyes. "Can't see a thing. Blurred."
Suddenly he lifted both elbows as though fighting something off. He flailed
ineffectively.
I
snapped my finger and abruptly he was quiet. 'What's
happening, Captain?"
"Taking
me out of the capsule—" He
stopped, staring, amazement on his face. "We're moving up on another ship—"
His voice dropped, became awestruck. "My God!
This is a spaceship?" His head moved slowly from side to side, as though
surveying a great bulk. "This thing is bigger by far than the Forrestal. It's like a mountain of metal. We're going
into it. It's immense. Immense. What sort of power do
they use? Why doesn't it register on our trackers? A thing this size, no matter
how distant—stop!"
He lashed out, slowly,
dreamily, like a man moving under water.
He closed his eyes, shuddering slightly. "God! Don't touch me. Don't." He shrank away; then
he lashed out, swinging his big fists violently. Gradually he relaxed, arms down.
"What's
happening, Paul?"
"They're
talking to me. Soothingly. Quietly.
One of them—" his face wrinkled
in disgust. "He's patting me on the head like I'm a scared dog or
something. An infant."
"He's
patting you? Then you can
see them? Describe them."
He
shook his head, his limbs moving slowly. Walking motions.
"I can't see them," he mumbled.
"Try,
Davenport. Look at them closely. Closely. You can see
them perfectly, can't you?"
"No,"
he whispered, after a moment's intense straining. "No. I can see everything
else. This wall. Metal. Warm. And this room—low table,
bright lights, like a lab, maybe? Wall with a big chart or
graph on it. But not them. I can't see
them." He squinted painfully. "Blur. Just a
blur."
He thrashed about again, making those same slow-motion
fighting actions. He grunted, sweat pouring off his face.
"What's
happening, Paul?"
"Taking off my suit. My clothes. Tape.
Naked." The perspiration vanished, and suddenly he shivered, teeth
clicking. "Man, it's colder than hell now. Naked.
Standing alongside—" A puzzled
frown on his face, and then the clearance of sudden recognition. "Like a
police line-up," he muttered, scowling. "There's a chart or outline
hanging on the wall. I'm standing next to it. Light coming
through it. Smell of electricity—ozone."
He remained rigid, arms at his side. Then, reluctantly, his arms spread out,
his fingers apart. He opened his legs. He scowled.
"Some
sort of fluoroscope. They're measuring me, taking pictures of my insides."
"Who
are they?" I snapped my fingers. "Paul. Listen. I
want you to see them. Look right at them. Look at them"
He
half sat up, peering as though through blinding lights. "Nothing," he
said softly. "Can't see them. Just
a blur."
"All right. You're up against a screen. You feel that
it's a fluoroscope of some sort—an X-ray machine. Go on."
He
shivered again, goose flesh popping out all over his arms. "Counting my
ribs," he said. "Toes, fingers, teeth. What
is this—hey!"
He
went on, describing in great detail what appeared to
be a very thorough physical examination. Nothing external, apparently, was
left unnoticed. He described the feeling of a viscous, slimy substance which
hardened over him. At this point his body assumed a slowly stiffening position.
"What do you feel now,
Captain?"
His
voice was choking, panicky. "It's like a tight pressure suit," he
gasped. "Tight. Tighter. I can't breathe."
He went rigid, arms down at his sides, fingers extended, toes stretched out, chin back. He remained that way for long seconds, and then
he relaxed, took a deep breath.
"Paul? What's
happening?"
"Ah,
feels good. Thought I'd had it." He winced
slightly. "Peeling it off. I'll be—" He got up on an elbow and stared.
"It's me—a mold of me. Split in half. It looks like ... a mummy case. Soft
material, a little like foam rubber. A mold of my
body." His muscles bulged again, and he made frantic flailing
motions.
"What is it?"
"It's an operating
room," he said, and his voice was flat, dead, filled with suppressed
terror. "They're putting me on a table. No!" He half rose, mouth
wide open in a scream.
I
snapped my finger, and he subsided, looking up at the ceiling, eyes wide,
staring.
"Tell me, Paul. What's
happening now?"
"Something—They're putting something on my temples. Wires.
Electricity again."
I
watched him intently. Suddenly on each side of his head the hairs stood
straight out; the skin over the temples became completely white, bloodless.
He
went limp, and his arms lay at his sides, unresisting, palms out, fingers curled slightly. He was apparently in a deep,
electrically-induced coma. He breathed slowly, evenly. I took his pulse. It
had dropped to nearly a quarter of normal. His temperature was also way down.
He remained, unmoving, looking at the ceiling, but I noticed a curious horripilation, a spasmodic shudder of his stomach muscles,
and on impulse I opened his shirt.
I stared. A fine red line ran from his
breastbone down to his lower abdomen. Even as I watched, the vivid red streak
faded until it became a thin white scar line that might have been only a
creased imprint from the couch. And in a moment even that vanished; nothing
remained but matted hair.
Gradually his pulse and heartbeat returned to
normal. He began breathing heavily again. Eventually, he opened his eyes, and I
saw the pupils expand, then begin a slow circling
movement, exactly as they'd done when I'd been putting him in trance.
"Davenport,"
I said sharply. "Quick! What's happening?"
"They are telling me—" his voice seemed dragged from deep
within. "When I return to flight, I will not remember.
I—will—not—remember." He nodded agreement.
I
snapped my finger. He relaxed. "What's going on now?"
He came up on one elbow, then
swung off the couch, a look of pleased surprise on his face. "My
spacesuit. My clothes. They're trying to dress
me. Okay, okay." He made irritable brushing motions. "I can get the
damned things on."
He
put his hands up over his head and made careful wriggling motions, as though
slipping into a tight-fitting suit. He adjusted various clips and snaps and
finally reached up and guided something down over his head and onto his
shoulders, obviously his helmet. "Careful,"
and he nodded again. "That's good. That does it."
"Paul?" I said
questioningly.
"They're taking me
back. There's the capsule."
"Where are you
now?"
He
craned his head around, slowly, awkwardly, as though fully encased in space
gear. "Looks like the hangar deck of an aircraft carrier," he murmured,
"if there could be a carrier this big, that is. Gad! It looks like the
runway at Patrick. Miles long." He made curious
twisting contortions.
"What's going on now,
Paul?"
"Back
in the capsule," he said, his voice straining as
he grunted and adjusted himself. He glanced around. "One thing, they know
the manual as well as anyone."
He
sucked in a breath and sank down onto the couch, seeming to flatten as he did
so. He remained that way for a long moment, his cheeks sunken, eyes receded,
and slowly, slowly, his features began to fill out again, bis
breathing became regular, and he opened his eyes. Instantly a grin came on his
face, and he said, "Hello, you blue, beautiful old earth."
"Paul," I said,
"where are you?"
He
looked at me, then quickly glanced beyond, as though
still staring at a far-distant, but rapidly approaching, earth. "In the
can heading for home," he said matter-of-factly. "Sixty hours to
re-entry."
"How about the big spaceship?" I said. "The operating
room?"
He
flicked switches and exarnined dials. "I don't
follow you at all, friend," he said impatiently.
Obviously
the experience, and it was a valid one, was over. He'd been put into flight
once again and all memory of the past six hours obliterated at the conscious
level. I snapped my finger. "When I count three, Captain Davenport,"
I said slowly and distinctly, "you will come back, with no memory of
anything you have said here. One, two, three—"
He sat perfectly still, then
he said, "All over?" I nodded, and he said, "Funny. I don't
remember any of it."
"There's nothing to
remember, Captain," I told him.
Afterward I compared notes with Colonel
Friend. I asked him if Davenport had undergone a fluoroscopic examination
after the space flight. Friend shook his head.
"I'd
like a complete gastro-intestinal series," I said. "As
soon as possible."
"But
why the G.I. series?" he asked. "Has Davenport complained of
anything?"
"No, he hasn't," I said. "And
that's just the point—he should have."
The
series was made. Davenport was given the usual dosage of chemicals which are
used to make the internal organs visible to X rays.
Under the fluoroscope two very strange things were noted: From breastbone to
lower abdomen a long thin line glowed noticeably. Also, in the cecum—the first portion of the large intestine located in
the lower right part of the abdomen—the entire area glowed with the same pulsant light.
Davenport's
medical records show that he has never had an appendectomy—or surgery of any
kind, in fact.
Close
interrogation elicited the admission from Davenport that just after his having
been selected to take the "big ride" (as he puts the moon shot) he
had felt some nasty pains and a slight rigidity of the right lower quadrant of
his abdomen. In other words, he'd been exhibiting definite symptoms of
appendicitis. He attributed the pains, however, to nervous excitement.
He
admitted that the pain was quite bad directly after the rocket lifted; the
strain of the heavy g-pull pressing down on his abdomen undoubtedly would have
aggravated this condition. But he says that after he'd orbited the moon and
come in sight of the earth again, the pain vanished.
An
exploratory operation was performed on Davenport in order to ascertain the
source of the strange glow within his body cavity, and it was then we
discovered that Davenport's appendix had been expertly removed—and apparently
quite recently. Fresh pink tissue covers the incised area.
But
odder still, there is a long row of regular geometrical figures or designs,
triangles, loops, dots and dashes, outlined in pale blue on the cecum, just above where the appendix had been. I would say
it is a tattoo in inert, ineradicable ink.
The source of the glow has been unidentified
to date, but I feel certain it is the residual effect of some radioactive
process used to regenerate tissues, to heal incisions instantaneously.
Some
very faint scar tissue did remain inside, however,
enough to show beyond doubt that Davenport's abdomen had been opened at one
time.
My
conclusions are these: Davenport actually underwent the traumatic experience
he so vividly relived for me.
By
some beings, species unknown (attracted by the flares?), the space capsule was
snagged in mid-flight and taken aboard a huge spaceship of some kind, obviously
equipped with radar-deflection devices, as well as the powerful subatomic forcefields which completely stopped all instruments (but
not the spring-operated camera as they discovered, necessitating editing the
film).
This
ship, doubtless a scout, then transferred Davenport to an immensely greater
"mother" ship, and there Davenport was subjected to a thorough
physiological examination, complete to having a mold made of his body.
In
the course of internal examination (the opening undoubtedly made with an
instrument operating on the principle of the electron scalpel which makes a
microscopically thin incision) Davenport's diseased appendix was discovered
and removed and the queer "tattoo" placed on the conveniently broad cecum.
He
was then closed up and the incision treated by some process which virtually
instantaneously regenerated the tissues. Davenport was revived, put into a
deep trance, given a post-hypnotic command to forget everything that had
occurred since his capture, then placed back into the capsule and put into
flight at the precise spot his schedule called for.
His
inability to describe his captors seems to have been due to some brilliant
emanation that came from them,
making it impossible for him to look directly at
them without a blurring of his vision. When I ordered him to look at them, he peered
painfully, as into some intolerably dazzling light.
One last conclusion I offer gratuitously:
Zoologists,
and other interested individuals concerned with the study of many types of
wildlife, follow the practice of capturing a selected few of whatever
particular animal is under study, attaching small harmless identifying tags to
them and then releasing them.
These
tags, along with specific coded information, usually contain a request to whomsoever might later capture the tagged animal to return
the tag, along with pertinent data such as date of capture, location, size and
weight of the animal, etc.
In
this way growth patterns, migratory habits, longevity and other technical data
are gradually amassed concerning the particular species under study. Such
tagged animals are known as "controls."
Do
you follow me? It would appear from Davenport's queer tattoo that he was seized
in mid-flight, swiftly and expertly examined—inside and out—tagged and then released.
By whom—and for what purpose—remains to be
seen.
Sincerely,
Amos Fineman, M.D.
A Distant Shrine
I cannot
prove what I am about to
tell you. I only know that much of what Kurt Von Seigert
told me that predawn day in Moscow has been verified by our own intelligence
sources. There has been a rumor that Von Seigert
vanished from Lubyanka prison, in Moscow, under
mysterious circumstances; his family is known to be in North America, under
heavy guard at all times. There is increased activity among American missile
men, with a curious corresponding decrease in Russian missile activity.
I
do have certain photographs; one an aerial photograph showing a modest little
village beneath a disquieting blue-black sky, a village of red stone houses,
half-timbered, of an oddly medieval appearance. And another photograph, this
one of a strange metallic object, somewhat saucer-shaped, crumpled, but
recognizable as a very large artifact of quite advanced design—this lying on a
low base of reddish rough sandstone blocks, with deep, barely distinguishable
letters cut into it and running about the base out of sight. All
this within an apparently huge but crude building, with fierce sunlight
streaming down from slitted embrasures high above.
And I have a third photograph of this crude building's doorway.
All
very odd.
I
also know from my scientific sources (I am a minor U.S. Embassy official in
Moscow, with certain other duties
26
not
usually mentioned) that an unprecedented pall of radioactive material is
orbiting the earth at a considerable height above the atmosphere (1,025 miles,
to be exact) as though a thermonuclear device had been detonated, something on
the order of five megatons or so.
That and what I know about
Von Seigert:
I
was awakened one freezing, dark predawn by a continuous but soft knocking on
my door. I hesitated. After all, American Embassy officials in Russia have been
known to disappear. But after a few moments, I shrugged and padded barefooted
to the door,-drawing the latch. Instantly the door flew open, and a short, slim
man popped in and shut the door behind him, one finger on his lips for silence.
I stared at him, astonished, and then I recognized him. It was Kurt Von Seigert, but not the Von Seigert
I'd known when, after the collapse of Germany during World War Two, I'd tried
to persuade him to join the other rocket experts who were coming to the West.
That Von Seigert was husky, shrewd-eyed, secure in the knowledge that his genius would assure a
comfortable living wherever he sold his services. He'd gone to Russia.
But
this Von Seigert was shrunken, thin, his face so
darkly tanned as to be nearly black. His eyes glowed with the familiar sharp
intelligence; there was even the same faint arrogance there. And
something else.
"Listen,"
he said sharply, "only listen. I have no time for arguments. Listen, and
remember. I was a fool not to have gone to America—I know that now. But—" he made a typical gesture. I
fumbled for cigarettes, lighting them, staring at him. He was even more
incredibly sun-tanned in the light of the match.
He stood before me, and even (I know now) with
the possibility of imminent death hanging over his head, he couldn't help a
faint grin as he said, "Last night I returned from the planet Mars."
I
gaped at him, and he nodded seriously. "So now, either one of two things
will occur, the first directly dependent upon the failure of the second to
happen." He held up two fingers. "A: The
Russians will claim possession of the planet Mars by right of exploration and
show video tapes, quite excellent ones, and complete—or nearly complete—aerial
photographic maps of the entire globe, as well as photos of Lenin I,
a nuclear-powered spaceship
I personally designed and built—"
He waved me off as I grabbed his arm.
"To
continue with A" he
went on, his voice calm and unhurried, "they will go on to say that Mars
is uninhabited, but a fertile, mineral-rich planet which they claim wholly and
in toto. And they'll express regret that upon his
return from that historic flight one of the members of the four-man expedition—Kurt
Von Seigert—became insane and fled from Russia. That his journey through space has caused his complete mental
collapse, and he is dangerous, both to himself and others and should be
immediately returned to Russia for 'hospitalization'." He paused;
his faint grin widened. "Or—"
He stopped.
"Or—?" I said, intensely curious, the biting cold forgotten. I knew this man.
I knew how desperately his serv-ices.had been wanted by the West, how badly
he'd harmed our prestige time and again by his series of brilliant rocket
advances made in the name of the dark god communism.
"Or
B"—his voice dropped and became regretful—
"there will be an explosion on the order of five megatons about one
thousand and twenty-five miles above the earth" —he glanced at his watch—"in
about four hours from now. In which event the Russians will say absolutely
nothing about Mars or the Lenin I—their
proof will have been vaporized. And my life will then be worth even less than
it is at this moment; they know of what value I can be to the West."
I stared at him. His eyes held mine, keen,
unwavering, definitely sane. He took a small plastic pouch from his pocket and
opened it. "Here are some photographs in color I managed to salvage,"
he said. "In the event A happens,
you must somehow manage to convey to the United Nations, indeed to all
civilized people of good intentions throughout the world, that Russia has no
claim on Mars because Mars
is inhabited; that
it has a civDiza-tion—backward in most respects but
flourishing—and that this civilization came from earth nearly seven hundred
years ago."
I
reached numbly for the little packet of pictures, but he held them away, his
face intent, his eyes piercing in his near-black face.
"Above all," he said solemnly, "Russia must not be permitted to
return to Mars without supervision. It is their intention, using my Lenin I,
to destroy those brave,
struggling villages that dot that lonely planet. I repeat—Mars is inhabited and
by children of Earth. Mars belongs to them by prior right of colonization no
matter how accidental it might have been."
"Accidental?"
I caught him as he sprang toward the window, peered out, then quickly returned.
"What is this, Von Seigert?" He rubbed his
eyes, sat down on my bed and began to talk.
The
Lenin I, Von Seigert told me, was a nuclear-powered
spaceship built in total secrecy far above the Earth. Generating a thrust of
some ten-million pounds, continuously—it was designed to operate only in outer
space; the exhaust from its engines was highly lethal in an atmosphere. It
carried a large payload: besides the four-man crew there were a small two-man
hypersonic glider for atmospheric flights, several monoatomic
ramjets—scout and survey ships, each equipped with sub-miniaturized TV and
audio equipment, as well as wide-angle precision cameras. There were also
several tiny robot tanks for geological survey work.
But
the Lenin /'s most precious cargo by far was the
hundreds of spools of extremely sensitive electronic tapes and fine-grained
film—all packed carefully into heavy lead-lined boxes vitally necessary to
deflect the damaging impact of the high-energy radiation encountered in space
flight.
The pictures these tapes and films were meant
to record, of course, would be Russia's sole proof of the success of the expedition.
A powerful rocket glider, designed and built by Von Seigert
and manned by a crack crew, would be waiting on a launching pad in Russia,
waiting to go into orbit alongside the Lenin I upon
its successful return from Mars, specifically to take off this precious load of
tapes and film for re-entry and landing on Earth.
Operating
on an exceedingly tight schedule, the Lenin I had
completed the flight to Mars in a little over forty-four days, a bit behind
schedule. The intention had not been to land men at all on this flight but
merely to map the globe, pick up samples of minerals, etc., by means of the
remote-controlled robots and, finally, to return to Earth after two days of
orbiting Mars. A very tight schedule made necessary by the steady accretion of
ash on the fuel rods in the nuclear engines.
The
first results of the aerial survey exceeded their wildest hopes. The planet had
an atmosphere, thin but eminendy breathable. While
the Lenin I orbited above this atmosphere, they launched
their mono-atomic survey ships, unique gold-catalyst ram-jets which operated by
recombining "stripped" nitrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere,
thereby gaining thrust and unlimited fuel.
The
first few passes showed that Mars was a rich prize indeed, far from the barren,
airless planet the astronomers pictured. Near the poles were great belts of
trees, forests in all stages of growth, with pleasant streams meandering
through broad meadows. Further down the globe were huge rolling prairies,
covered with rippling vegetation resembling grain. There were immense areas
near the equator that were bare bleak deserts of sandstone and reddish sand.
But mainly, the planet was fertile.
On
the fourth pass over a vast desert area, one of the ram-jets showed a picture
of something that looked too square and regular to be a mere outcropping of
rock. The picture was zoomed up, and the men in the Lenin I cried aloud. It was a building, large and
square, with curiously familiar towers and flying buttresses about it. And surrounding
the building, they observed under extreme magnification, were upright stones, laid out in ordered precision. About the building were
walks and meager decorations, also orderly in appearance.
All
in all it looked remarkably like a graveyard about a church. A medieval church, long abandoned. Desolate.
It
was decided to land at once, using the hypersonic glider. In Mars* reduced
gravity it would be possible to return to the Lenin Fs
orbit even with the
comparatively feeble thrust the small glider possessed. Because he was the
smallest, Von Seigert was one of the two chosen to
go. The expedition commander, EvekofT, remained on
the Lenin I. The men wore spacesuits with direct communication and no switch-offs.
The landing was fast but uneventful. When
they approached the great sandstone edifice, sharp and clear in the dry, dry
air, Von Seigert gave a gasp of disbelief. There was
a single word and a date chiseled above the doorway—in writing he understood. And on each side of the
word-—-a frieze depicting an unmistakable animal, the most common creature on Earth.
Inside
they paused, staring. The building was a shrine, a shrine covering a crumpled,
battered, metallic object, perhaps three hundred feet in diameter, that even
then, pitted with ancient rust, disintegrating slowly under what must have been
the impact of many hundreds of years of time's slow passage, was obviously a
spaceship of incredibly advanced design.
A
spaceship.
"What
is it?" EvekofTs harsh Russian jarred in Von Seigerfs cars. Calmly, as quickly as he could, Von Seigert told what he was seeing, while his companion
recorded it all with a minature TV transistorized
camera. And from the Lenin
I came the muffled gasps of
surprise. It was all going into the tapes, he knew.
But
one thing didn't go into the tapes—the crudely lettered words, carved deeply
into the rough, red sandstone base which supported the shattered remains of the
spaceship. The camera recorded the words on electronic tape but only their
image. Von Seigert stood for long moments, puzzling
over the inscriptions, reading the archaic language with difficulty, but
reading it. To himself.
They
walked about the silent, empty shrine, their footfalls causing tiny tinkling
sounds as bits of the spaceship fell to the ground under their tread. Outside
there were names chiseled on all the many upthrust
stone monuments. Names with a familiar ring to Von Seigert,
in writing he understood. He looked again at the animals carved above the door
and the name chiseled there, and suddenly he shook with silent laughter.
Incredible, but it was all in the books. A matter of record for all who chose
to delve deeply enough—and put the pieces together.
They
stopped, peering about. As far as they could see stretched
the barren desert of middle Mars. Nothing moved. Above, the
"dazzling sky arched overhead, blue, deep, dark blue, approaching black.
But empty. Empty.
He
stared once again at that enigmatic building. At that one word, that date and
those identical animals. His mind whirled back through the centuries, imagining
their fear, their total terror. Those who had survived the crash of that ship
within this building, being young, little by little had regained their courage.
Perhaps even he—the pilot— perhaps he had survived
long enough to give them some of his great knowledge. Perhaps
not. In any event they'd survived; they'd build this edifice in memory
of their friends, their home—and that animal which had led to their tragedy.
Was it possible, after all these centuries, that some of them, their
descendants, still survived?
Through
his earphones he heard some rapid talk from Evekoff
and an inarticulate cry from the navigator still aboard. Then the distinct
words: "My god—look! A town! Houses! People!" After that, a harsh word from Evekoff and stillness. Then the order,
"Return to the ship."
Evekoff listened carefully to Von Seigert's rapid description of the shrine below, of the
spaceship within, and he merely nodded curtly. Von Seigert
said nothing about the inscription around the base of the platform supporting
the spaceship. When he'd finished talking, Evekoff
waited for long moments, staring piercingly at him. Then he said softly,
"You understand, comrade, that what you have seen is to go no farther than
us four?" And looking into the hard, black eyes, Von Seigert
remembered a fact he'd attached no significance to—until now: Evekoff spoke and read and wrote German fluently.
After
forty-eight hours of intensive mapping, photographing via camera and TV
electronic tape hookup through the survey ships, during which time Von Seigert had no access to the monitors, the Lenin I abandoned her tiny robots to whirl endlessly
about Mars, turned her sleek nose toward the sun and began the long inward
plunge back to the Earth. And forty-four days later it began its Earth orbit as
silently and secretly as it had left, with only the Kremlin aware of its
successful flight and the landing on Mars.
But during those forty-four days, snatching
the opportunity whenever Evekoff and the others
slept, Von Seigert managed to view some of the video
tapes which had been kept from him by Evekoff. After
viewing those tapes and hearing the open comments of the others concerning
those tapes and what they meant to Russia's hopes pertaining to Mars, Von Seigert knew what he had to do.
As
the Lenin I orbited the Earth, they were told by rocket
base that it would be a given number of hours before the special rocket-glider
and crew, poised for final countdown on a launching pad far below, could
achieve their orbit and maneuver alongside to take off her precious cargo of
heavy lead-lined boxes, each marked now with map co-ordinates.
Evekoff and Von Seigert
were ordered to land immediately, using the hypersonic glider. The remaining
two crewmen were to assist in the transfer of the cargo and return with the
rocket-glider.
And so just before they prepared to leave the
huge
Lenin I to drift in silent orbit 1,025 miles above
the Earth, while awaiting the arrival of the cargo-glider, Von Seigert quietly made certain adjustments to the nuclear
engines, converting them into high-yield thermonuclear bombs—bombs primed to
detonate in a given number of hours—if left unchecked.
When
the two-man hypersonic glider put down at the great rocket base at Tyuratam near the Aral Sea, the KGB —State Security
Agents—were waiting to fly them, via special fast jet, to Moscow. And as they
landed at Moscow, Evekoff bluntly informed Von Seigert he was under arrest "for withholding vital
information."
"He
knew who they were on Mars—and where they came from," Von Seigert told me softly, there in that freezing-cold room in
Moscow. "He knew I would not remain silent about what the Kremlin intends
to do."
"What do they intend to do?" I
asked him, shifting my freezing feet.
"They
plan to return to Mars, this time with a load of small atomic bombs," he
said. "That's why they want me out of the way, so there'd be no one to
tell the world what I'm telling you—Mars is inhabited. I saw them: villages, on
the tapes the ram-jets took by video. And on the film.
Villages—modest villages by any standards, but still civilization.
Narrow crooked streets, cobbled, with overhanging brick and
wood-beamed homes. Churches with crosses."
He
looked steadily at me. "Do you understand? Churches,
surmounted by the crosses of Christianity—on Mars."
I
searched his eyes again. Utter sanity there. He looked at me, then slowly drew a photograph from the plastic packet.
"This is the door to the shrine of the spaceship."
I
reached for it but he held me off, looking intently into my face.
"Listen,"
he said. "There are many of them, these little medieval towns. Near either pole. All with that same curiously
familiar architecture." He laughed reminiscently, then went on. "Under extreme magnification the video
showed people walking around, fair, tall people. And relaxed
somehow. Unhurried. No mechanization whatsoever.
A few pushing handcarts or objects resembling wheelbarrows,
so they have the wheel. They had metal, obviously, but no machines. The wheel but no domestic animals. In fact, in all the
myriad passes over Mars, under extreme magnification no animals of any kind
were observed. Of any kind—not even a rodent." He smiled enigmatically at
this.
"But they had a
spaceship once," I said.
Again
that faint smile. "Agriculture they know. Those forests were obviously
being harvested and reforested at the same time. There were canals for bringing
down the irrigation waters from the melting polar caps. And yet nothing at all
sophisticated mechanically. Why? It was as if a group of people with a certain
experience but no real knowledge had been thrown into an environment beyond
their capacities—like children."
He
cocked his head and looked sharply at me. I stared back, puzzled. "The date on the door above. that
shrine reads: Anno Domini 1284—in Middle Low German script."
"But
that's impossible," I whispered, shivering, but not from the cold this
time. "What people in Germany, what nation on Earth, in 1284 A.D., had
spaceships?"
"No
people, no nation on Earth," Von Seigert said.
"But think. Throughout the ages, even biblical times, the stories, the
endless stories, of objects in the skies. Charles Fort records hundreds of
them, newspaper clippings, going back for centuries. And think of the people
who have vanished without a trace. Ships at sea found deserted, abandoned. Whole races known to have existed but gone. And think of one
group in particular. In Germany. A
calamity so great that to this day it is still commemorated. A tragic group disappearance in the year 1284 A.D."
I
shook my head slowly, watching him closely. "I thought I knew my
history," I said, "but that one escapes me."
"You know it, perhaps, from another sort
of history book," he said quietly. He looked beyond me to the window,
where the sky was turning a bitter gray.
"It
was all in the inscription around the base of the smashed spaceship," Von Seigert said. "How he came to their little town in
Germany, a tall, curiously dressed stranger, in search of treasure—a treasure
he'd come from beyond the sun to seek. And how this stranger had performed a
service for the townspeople, erasing a rodent plague that threatened them, only
to learn they were unworthy of the treasure they'd possessed all along: their
children."
He
handed me the photograph, but for an instant I didn't look at it. I couldn't. I
stared, fascinated, at Von Seigert.
"The
children," he said. "This stranger told them of a wonderful place,
beyond the farthest sun, where children were rare and precious—and wanted. The
inscription tells how the stranger had an instrument that sang an irresistible
song, so they followed him into the mountain. And how the ship had taken off,
softly, easily, rising up and beyond the Earth, outward from the sun, and still
they had no
fear. His music was all about them. But something
went wrong. They'd crash-landed on that barren place, far short of the goal.
The music had stopped; the dream had ended in nightmare. And many of them had
died along with the music maker—the Pied Piper." "Pied Piper!"
"The
children of Hameln," Von Seigert said, "desperately
needed on some other distant world where a race, perhaps, was dying out.
Hypnotized, kidnapped en masse. Marooned on Mars by a
crash-landing. But surviving. Always surviving. Mars is theirs by right of colonization.
Their descendants have long forgotten the shrine, abandoned in the bleak
distant desert. They are Martians now, and Earth—only a dim fairy tale."
Not
speaking, I moved near the window to examine the photograph in the swiftly
burgeoning light. It showed a doorway, opening into a great building made of
red sandstone, through which, dimly seen, gleamed a crumpled metal object.
There was lettering over the door, clearly visible. A single word and date in
medieval German script: hameln, 1284. a.d. And alongside these, on either side, a rough
frieze of an animal, clear, unmistakable: a rat. An ordinary
rat.
When I looked up, Von Seigert was gone.
Island of Fear
Kyle
Elliot clutched the smooth, tight-fitting stones of the high wall, unmindful of the fierce, direct
rays of the Aegean sun on his neck, staring, staring
through a chink.
He'd
come to this tiny island, dropped into the middle of the Aegean like a pebble
on a vast blue shield, just in the hope that something, something like what lay
beyond that wall, might turn up. And it had. It had.
Beyond,
in the garden behind the wall, was a fountain, plashing gently. And in the center of that fountain, two nudes, a mother and child.
A
mother and child, marvelously intertwined, intricately wrought of some stone
that almost might have been heliotrope, jasper or one of the other
semiprecious chalcedonies—although that would have been manifestly impossible.
He
took a small object like a pencil from his pocket and extended it. A miniature telescope. He gasped, looking once more through
the chink.
God,
the detail of the woman! Head slightly turned, eyes just widening with the
infinitesimal beginning of an expression of surprise as she looked—at what? And
half-sliding, clutching with one hand at the smooth thigh, reaching mouth
slightly rounded, plump other hand not quite touching
the milk-swollen breast—the child.
39
His professional eye moved over the figures,
his mind racing, trying to place the sculptor and failing. It was of no known
period. It might have been done yesterday; it might be millenniums old. Only
one thing was certain: no catalogue on earth listed it.
Kyle
had found this island by pure chance. He'd taken passage on a decrepit Greek caique that plied the Aegean, nudging slowly and without
schedule from island to island. From Lesbos to Chios to Samos, down through the
myriad Cyclades, and so on about the fabled sea, touching the old, old lands
where the gods had walked like men. The islands where occasionally some
treasure, long-buried, came to fight, and if it pleased Kyle's eyes and money
obtained it, then he would add it to his small collection. But only rarely did
anything please Kyle. Only rarely.
The
battered caique's engine had quit in the midst of a
small storm which drove them south and west. By the time the storm had cleared,
the asthmatic old engine was back in shape, coughing along. There was no radio,
but the captain was undisturbed. Who could get lost in the Aegean?
They had been drifting along,
a small water bug of a ship lost in the greenish-blue sea, when Kyle had seen
the dim purple shadow that was a tiny island in the distance. The binoculars
brought the little blob of land closer, and he sucked in his breath. An
incredible wall, covering a good quarter of the miniature island, leaped into
view: a great horseshoe of masonry that grew out of the sea, curved, embraced
several acres of the land, then returned, sinking at last into the sea again
where white foam leaped high even as he watched.
He called the captain's
attention to it. "There is a littie island over
there." And the captain, grinning, had squinted in the direction of Kyle's
pointing finger.
"There
is a wall on it," Kyle said, and instantly the grin vanished from the
captain's face; his head snapped around, and he stared rigidly ahead, away from
the island.
"It
is nothing," the captain said harshly. "Only a few goatherders live there. It has no name even."
"There
is a wall," Kyle had said gently. "Here," handing him the
binoculars, "look."
"No."
The captain's head didn't move one iota. His eyes remained looking straight
ahead. "It is just another ruin. There is no harbor there—it is years
since anyone has gone there. You would not like it. No electricity."
"I want to see the
wall and what is behind it."
The
captain flicked an eye at him. Kyle started. The eye seemed genuinely agitated.
"There
is nothing behind it. It is a very old place, and everything is long since
gone."
"I want to see the
wall," Kyle said quietly.
They'd
put him off finally, the little caique pointing its
grizzled snout to sea, its engine turning over just enough to keep it under
way, its muted throbbing the only sound. They'd rowed him over in a dinghy, and
as he approached, he noticed the strangely quiet single street of the village,
the lone taverna, the few dories with patched lateen sails, and
on the low, worn-down hills, the herds of drifting goats.
Almost
he might have believed the captain; that here was an old, tired island,
forgotten, out of the mainstream of the brilliant civilization that had
flowered in this sea— almost, until he remembered that wall. Walls are built to
protect, to keep out or keep in. He meant to see what.
After he'd settled in the primitive little taverna, he'd immediately set out for the wall, surveying it from the low knollt surprised again to note how much of this
small island it encompassed.
He'd walked all around it, hoping to find a
gate or a break in the smooth, unscalable wall that
towered up. There had been none. The grounds within sprawled on a sort of
peninsula that jutted out to where rock, barnacled, fanged, resisted the
restless surf.
And
coming back along the great wall, utterly baffled, he'd heard the faint musical
sound of water dropping within and peering carefully at the wall had seen the
small aperture, no bigger than a walnut, just above his head.
He
looked through the aperture and so stood, dazed at so much beauty, staring at
the woman and child, unable to tear away, knowing that here at last was the
absolute perfection he'd sought throughout the world.
How
was it that the catalogues failed to list this master work?
These things were impossibly hard to keep
quiet. And yet not a whisper, not a rumor had drifted from this island to the
others of what lay within those walls. Here on this remote pinprick of land, so
insignificant as to go unnamed, here behind a huge wall which was itself a work
of genius, here was this magic mother and child, glowing
all unseen.
He
stared, throat dry, heart pumping with the fierce exultation of the avid
connoisseur who has found something truly great—and unknown. He must have it.
He would have it. It wasn't listed; possibly, just possibly, its true worth was
unknown. Perhaps the owner of this estate had inherited it, and it remained
there in the center of the gently falling water unnoticed, unappreciated.
He
reluctantly turned away from the chink in the wall and walked slowly back
toward the village, scuffling the deep, pale,
immemorial dust. Greece. Cradle of western culture. He thought again of the
exquisite perfection of the motfier and child back
there. The sculptor of that little group deserved to walk on Olympus. Who was
it?
Back
in the village he paused before the taverna to take some of the dust off his shoes, thinking again how oddly
incurious, for Greeks, these few villagers were.
"Permit me?"
A
boy, eyes snapping, popped out of the taverna with a rag in one hand and some primitive shoe blacking in the other and
began cleaning Kyle's shoes.
Kyle
sat down on a bench and examined the boy. He was about fifteen, wiry and
strong, but small for his age. He might have, in an earlier era, been a model
for one of Praxiteles' masterpieces: the same perfectly molded head, the tight
curls, two ringlets falling over the brow like Pan's snubbed horns, the classic
Grecian profile. But, no, a ridged scar ran from the boy's nose to the corner
of the upper lip, lifting it ever so slightly, revealing a gHmmer
of white teeth.
No,
Praxiteles would never have used him for a model, unless, of course, he had a
slightly flawed Pan in mind.
"Who
owns the large estate beyond the village?" he asked in his excellent
Greek. The boy looked up quickly, and it was as if a shutter came down over his
dark eyes. He shook his head.
"You
must know it," Kyle persisted. "It covers the whole south end of this
island. A big wall, very high, all the way to the
water."
The
boy shook his head stubbornly. "It has always been there."
Kyle smiled at him. "Always is a long
time," he said. "Perhaps your father might know?"
"I am alone," the
boy said with dignity.
"I'm
sorry to hear that." Kyle studied the small expert movements of the boy.
"You really don't know the name of the persons who live there?"
The boy muttered a single
word.
"Gordon?"
Kyle leaned forward. "Did you say 'the Gordons'?
Is it an English family that owns that property?" He felt the hope dying
within. If an English family owned it, the chances were slim indeed of
obtaining that wonderful stone pair.
"They are not
English," the boy said.
"I'd like very much to
see them."
"There is no
way."
"I
know there's no way from the island," Kyle said, "but I suppose they
must have a dock or some facilities for landing from the sea."
The
boy shook his head, keeping his eyes down. Some of the villagers had stopped
and now were clustered about him, watching and listening quietly. Kyle knew his
Greeks, a happy, boisterous people, intolerably curious sometimes; full of
advice, quick to give it.
These people merely stood,
unsmiling, watching.
The
boy finished and Kyle flipped him a fifty-lepta coin.
The boy caught it and smiled, a flawed masterpiece.
"That
wall," Kyle said to the spectators, singling out one old man. "I am
interested in meeting the people who own that property."
The old man muttered
something and walked away.
Kyle
mentally kicked himself for the psychological error. In Greece money talks
first. "I will pay fifty—one hundred drachmas," he said loudly,
"to anyone who will take me in his boat around to the seaward side of the
wall."
It was a lot of money, he knew, to a poor
people eking out a precarious existence on this rocky island with their goats
and scanty gardens. Most of them wouldn't see that much cash in a year's hard
work.
A
lot of money, but they looked at one another, then turned and without a
backward glance they walked away from him. All of them.
Throughout
the village he met the same mysterious refusal, as difficult to overcome as
that enigmatic wall that embraced the end of the island. They refused even to
mention the wall or what it contained, who built it and when. It was as though
it didn't exist for them.
At
dusk he went back to the taverna, ate Dolmadakis, minced meat, rice, egg and
spices—surprisingly delicious —drank retsina, the resinated astringent wine of the peasant,
and wondered about the lovely mother and child, standing there behind that
great wall with the purple night clothing them. A vast surge of sadness, of
longing for the statues, swept over him.
What
a rotten break! He'd run into local taboos before. Most of them were the
results of petty feuds, grudges going back to antiquity. They were cherished by
the peasants, held tight, jealously guarded. What else was there of importance
in their small lives?
But this was something
entirely different.
He
was standing on the outskirts of the darkened village, gazing unhappily out to
sea, when he heard a soft scuffling. He turned quickly. A small boy was
approaching. It was the shoeshine boy, eyes gleaming in the star-shine,
shivering slightly though the night was balmy.
The boy touched his arm. His fingers felt
icy. "I—I will take you in my boat," he whispered.
Kyle
smiled, relief exploding within him. Of course, he should have thought of the
boy. A young fellow alone, without family, could use a hundred drachmas,
whatever the taboo.
"Thank you," he
said warmly. "When can we leave?"
"Before
the ebb tide, an hour before sunrise," the boy said, "only," his
teeth were chattering, "I will take you, but I will not come any closer
than the outer rocks between the walls. From there you must wait until the ebb
tide and walk—and walk—" He
gasped, as though choking.
"What
are you afraid of?" Kyle said. "I'll take all the responsibility for
trespassing, although I don't think—"
The
boy clutched his arm. "The others—tonight when you go back to the taverna, you will not tell the others that I am rowing you there?"
"Not if you don't want
me to."
"Please do not," he gasped.
"They would not like it if they knew—after that I—"
"I understand,"
Kyle said. "I won't tell anyone."
"An
hour before sunrise," the boy whispered. "I will meet you at the wall
where it goes into the water to the east."
The stars were still glowing, but faintly,
when Kyle met the boy, a dim figure sitting in a small rowboat that bobbed up
and down, scraping against the kelp and barnacles that grew from the base of
the monolithic wall. He realized suddenly that the boy must have rowed for
hours to get the boat this far around the island. It had no sails.
He
climbed in and they shoved off, the boy strangely silent. The sea was rough, a
chill predawn wind blowing raggedly. The wall loomed up alongside, gigantic in
the mist.
"Who
built this wall?" he asked, once they were out on the pitching water,
heading slowly around the first of a series of jagged, barnacled rocks
thrusting wetly above the rapidly ebbing tide.
"The
old ones," the boy said. His teeth were chattering. He kept his back
steadfastly to the wall, glancing only seaward to measure his progress.
"It has always been there."
Always. And yet, studying the long sweep of the wall
beginning to emerge in the first light, Kyle knew that it was very old. Very old. It might well date back to the beginning of Greek
civilization. And the statues, the mother and child. All of it an enigma no greater than the fact that they were unknown
to the outside world.
As
they drew slowly around until he was able to see the ends of the thick walls
rising out of the swirling, sucking sea, he realized that most certainly he
could not have been the first—not even the first hundredth. This island was
remote, not worth even being on a mail route, but surely over the many, many
years that wall had towered it must have been visited by people equally as
curious as he. Other collectors.
And
yet not a rumor.
The
boat rasped up against an enormous black rock, its tip white with bird
droppings, startlingly luminous in the half light. The boy shipped his oars.
"I
will come back here at the next tide," he said, shaking as though with a
fever. "Will you pay me now?"
"Of course." Kyle took out his billfold. "But aren't you at least going to take me further in than
this?"
"No," the boy
said shrilly. "I cannot."
"How about the dock?" Kyle surveyed the
considerable expanse of shallow, choppy surf between the rocks and the narrow,
sloping beach. "Why, hell—there isn't a dock!"
There was nothing between the walls but sand
dotted with huge rocks and, inland, a tangled growth of underbrush with an
occasional cypress rearing tall.
"I'll
tell you what—I'll take the boat in, and you wait
here," Kyle said. "I won't be long. I just want to get a chance to
meet whoever owns the place and arrange—"
"No!"
There was sharp panic in the boy's voice. "If you take the boat—■" He half rose, leaning
forward to shove off from the rock. At that instant a swell raised the boat,
then dropped it suddenly out from under the boy. Overbalanced, he swayed, arms
waving wildly, then went over backwards, hitting his
head on the rock. He slipped under the water like a stone.
Kyle made a quick lunge and missing,
immediately dove out of the rowboat after him, rasping his chest on the barnacled
shelf of rock a few feet beneath the boat. He got a good handful of the boy's
shirt, but it tore like paper. He grabbed again, got a firm grip on his hair
and stroked for the surface. He held him easily, treading water, looking for
the rowboat. It was gone, kicked away by his powerful dive, perhaps behind one
of the other rocks. No time to waste looking for it now.
He swam to shore, pulling the boy easily. It
was only a hundred yards or so to the smooth white beach, curving between the
two arms of the wall that sloped out and down into the ocean. When he came out
of the water, the boy was coughing weakly, salt water dribbling from his nose.
Kyle carried him well above the tide mark and
sat him down on the sand. The boy opened his eyes and peered at him, puzzled.
"You'll be all right," Kyle said.
"I'd better get your boat before it drifts too far." He walked back
down to the surf line, kicked off his shoes and stroked off to where the boat
rose and fell, nuzzling another of the large rocks that littered the space
between the towering walls. He rowed the boat back, facing the sea and the
swift-rising sun. The wind had dropped to a whisper.
He
beached the boat and gathered up his shoes. The boy was leaning against a rock,
looking inland over his shoulder in an attitude of rigid watchfulness.
"Feeling better now?" Kyle called
cheerfully. It occurred to him that their little mishap was an excellent
excuse for being here, on property belonging to someone who obviously valued
his privacy highly.
The
boy didn't move. He remained staring back into the tangle of trees, back to
where the massive walls converged in the distance, stark, white, ancient.
Kyle touched him on the bare shoulder.
He
pulled his hand away, fists tightiy clenched. He
looked at the sand. Here were the marks where the boy had risen, here the
dragging footsteps where he'd come to lean against this rock. And here he still
stood, glancing over his shoulder toward the trees, hps
barely parted, a look of faint surprise just starting
on his face.
And
there, coming out of the tangled trees, a delicate tracery of footsteps led
toward this rock and behind. Footsteps slender, high-arched,
as though a woman, barefooted, scarcely touching the sand, had approached for
just an instant. Looking at the strange footprints, Kyle understood
completely what he should have guessed when first he'd peered through that
chink in the wall, gasping at the unimaginable perfection of the woman and her
child.
Kyle
knew intimately all the ancient fables of early
Greece. And now, looking at the footprints in the sand, one of the most
terrible leaped into his mind: The Gorgons.
The
Gorgons were three sisters, Medusa, Euryale and Stheno,
with snakes writhing where their hair should have been. Three creatures so
awful to look upon, the legend said, that whosoever
dared gaze upon them instantly turned to stone.
Kyle stood on the warm sand, with the gull
cries, the restless Aegean sea sounds all about him, and he knew at last who
the old ones were who'd built the wall; why they'd built it to lead into the
living waters and whom—what—the walls were meant to contain.
Not
an English family named the Gordons. A much more ancient family—the Gorgons. Perseus
had slain Medusa, but her two hideous sisters, Euryale and Stheno,
were immortal.
Immortal.
Oh,
god! It was impossible. A myth. And yet— His
connoisseur's eyes, even through the sweat of fear, noted the utter perfection
of the small statue that leaned against the rock, head turned slightly, an
expression of surprise on the face as it peered over one shoulder in the
direction of the trees. The two tight ringlets, like snubbed
horns above the brow, the perfect molding of the head, the classic Grecian
profile. Salt water still flecked the smoothly gleaming shoulders, still
dripped from the torn shirt that flapped about the stone waist. Pan, in chalcedony.
But
Pan had a flaw. From the nose to the comer of the upper lip ran a ridge, an
onyx scar that lifted the edge of
the onyx hp slightly so that, faintly, a glimmer of onyx teeth showed.
A
flawed masterpiece.
He
heard the rustle behind him as of robes, smelled an indescribable scent, heard
a sound that could only have been a multiple hissing—and though he knew he
mustn't, he turned slowly.
And
looked.
Creature of the
Snows
Ed McKale straightened up under his load of cameras and equipment,
squinting against the blasting wind, peering, staring, sweeping the jagged, unending
expanse of snow and wind-scoured rock. Looking, searching, as he'd been doing
now for two months, cameras at the ready.
Nothing.
Nothing but the towering Himalayas, thrusting miles high on all sides,
stretching in awesome grandeur from horizon to horizon, each
pinnacle tipped with immense banners of snow plumes, streaming out in the
wind, vivid against the darkly blue sky. The vista was one of surpassing
beauty. Viewing it, Ed automatically thought of light settings, focal length,
color filters—then just as automatically rejected the thought. He was here on
top of the world to photograph something infinitely more newsworthy, if only he
could find it.
The
expedition paused, strung out along a ridge of blue snow, with shadows falling
away to the right and left into terrifying abysses, and Ed sucked for air.
Twenty thousand feet is really quite high, although many of the peaks beyond
rose nearly ten thousand feet above him.
Up
ahead, the Sherpa porters (each a marvelous shot— gap-toothed, ebullient grins,
seamed faces, leathery brown) bowed under stupendous loads for this altitude,
leaning on their coolie crutches, waiting for Dr. Schenk to
52
make up his mind. Schenk, the expedition leader,
was arguing with the guides again, his breath spurting litde
puffs of vapor, waving his arms, pointing down.
Obviously
Schenk was calling it quits. He was within his rights, Ed knew; two months was
all Schenk had contracted for. Two months of probing snow and ice; scrambling
over crevasses, up rotten rock cliffs, wind-ravaged, bleak, stretching
endlessly toward Tibet and the never-never lands beyond. Two months of
searching for footprints where none should be. Searching for
odors, for droppings, anything to disclose the presence of creatures other than
themselves. Without success.
Two months of nothing. Big, fat nothing.
The
expedition was a bust. The goofiest assignment of this or any other century, as
Ed felt it would be from the moment he'd sat across the desk from the big boss
in the picture magazine's New York office two months ago, looking at a blurred
photograph, while the boss filled him in on the weird details.
The
photograph, his boss had told him gravely, had been taken in the Himalayan mountains, at an altitude of twenty-one thousand feet, by a
man who had been soaring overhead in a motorless
glider.
"A
glider," Ed had said noncommittally, staring at the fuzzy, enlarged
snapshot of a great expanse of snow and rocky ledges, full of harsh light and
shadows, a sort of roughly bowl-shaped plateau apparently, and in the middle of
it, a group of indistinct figures, tiny, lost against the immensity of great
ice pinnacles. Ed looked closer. Were the figures people? If so, what had
happened to their clothes?
"A
glider," his boss reiterated firmly. The glider pilot, the boss said, was
maneuvering in an updraft, attempting to do the incredible—soar over Mount
Everest in a homemade glider. The wide-winged glider had been unable to
achieve the flight over Everest, but flitting silently about seeking updrafts,
it cleared a jagged pinnacle and there, less than a thousand feet below, the
pilot saw movement where none should have been. And dropping lower, startled,
he'd seen, the boss said dryly, "Creatures— creatures that looked exactly
like a group of naked men and women and kids playing in the snow—at an altitude
of twenty-thousand five hundred feet." He'd had the presence of mind to
take a few hasty snapshots before the group disappeared. Only one of the
pictures had developed.
Looking
at the snapshot with professional scorn, Ed had said, "These things are
indistinct. I think he's selling you a bill of goods."
"No,"
the boss said, "we checked on the guy. He really did make the glider
flight. We've had experts go over that blow-up. The picture's genuine. Those
are naked, biped, erect-walking creatures." He flipped the picture irritably.
"I can't publish this thing. I want closeups,
action shots, the sort of thing our subscribers have
come to expect of us."
He'd
lighted a cigar slowly. "Bring me back some pictures I can publish, Ed,
and you can write your own ticket."
"You're
asking me to climb Mount Everest," Ed said carefully, keeping the sarcasm
out of his voice, "to search for this plateau here," he tapped the
shoddy photograph, "and take pix of—what are they—biped, erect-walking
creatures, you say?"
The
boss cleared his throat. "Not Mount Everest, Ed. It's Gauri
Sankar, one of the peaks near Mount Everest.
Roughly,
it's only about twenty-three thousand feet or so high."
"That's pretty rough," Ed said.
The
boss looked pained. "Actually it's not Gauri Sankar either. Just one of the lesser
peaks of the Gauri Sankar
massif. Well under twenty-three thousand. Certainly nothing to bother a
hot-shot ex-paratrooper like you, Ed."
Ed
winced, and the boss continued: "This guy—this glider pilot—wasn't able to
pinpoint the spot, but he did come up with a pretty fair map of the terrain,
for a pretty fair price. We've checked it out with the American Alpine Club; it
conforms well with their own charts of the general
area. Several expeditions have been in the vicinity but not at this exact spot,
they tell me. It's not a piece of cake by any means, but it's far from being
another An-napurna or K2 for accessibility."
He sucked at his cigar thoughtfully.
"The Alpine Club says we've got only about two months of good weather
before the inevitable monsoons hit that area, so time, as they say, is of the
essence, Ed. But two months for this kind of thing fcought to be plenty. Everything will be
first class—we're even including these new gas guns that shoot hypodermic
needles or something similar. We'll fly the essentials in to Katmandu and
airdrop everything possible along the route up to your base,"—he squinted
at a map—"Namche Bazar,
a Sherpa village which is twelve thousand feet high."
He
smiled amiably at Ed. "That's a couple of weeks march up from the nearest
railhead and ought to get you acclimatized nicely. Plenty of
experienced porters at Namche, all Sherpas. We've lined up a couple of expert mountain
climbers with Himalayan backgrounds. And expedition leader will be Dr. Schenk,
top man in his field."
"What is his
field?" Ed asked gloomily.
"Zoology. Whatever these things are in this picture, they're animal, which is his
field. Everyone will be sworn to secrecy. You'll be the only one permitted to
use a camera, Ed. This could be the biggest thing you'll ever cover, if these
things are what I think they are."
"What do you think
they are?"
"An
unknown species of man—or sub-man," his boss said, and prudently Ed
remained silent. Two months would tell the tale.
But two months didn't tell.
Oh,
there were plenty of wild rumors by the Nepalese all along the upper route. Hushed stories of the two-legged creature that walked like a man.
A monster the Sherpas called Yeti. Legends.
Strange encounters; drums sounding from snow-swept heights;
wild snatches of song drifting down from peaks that were inaccessible to ordinary
men. And one concrete fact: a ban, laid on by the Buddhist monks,
against the taking of any life in the high Himalayas. What life? Ed wondered.
Stories,
legends—but nothing else.
Two
months of it. Starting from the tropical flatlands, up through the lush, exotic
rain forest, where sun struggled through immense trees festooned with orchids.
Two months, moving up into the arid foothills, where foliage abruptly ceased,
and the rocks and wind took over. Up and ever up to where the first heavy snow
pack lay. And higher still, following the trail laid out by the glider pilot.
(And what impelled a man, Ed wondered, to soar over Mount Everest in a homemade
glider?)
Two months during which Ed had come to dislike
Dr.
Schenk intensely. Tall, saturnine, smelling strongly of formaldehyde, Schenk classified
everything into terms of vertebrate, invertebrate.
So
now, standing on this wind-scoured ridge with the shadows falling into the
abysses on either side, Ed peered through ice-encrusted goggles, watching
Schenk arguing with the guides. He motioned to the ledge above, and obediently
the Sherpas moved toward it. Obviously that would be
the final camping spot. The two months were over by several days; Schenk was within
his rights to call it quits. It was only Ed's assurances that the plateau they
were seeking lay just ahead that had kept Schenk from bowing out exactly on the
appointed time—that and the burning desire to secure his niche in zoology
forever with a new specimen: biped, erect-walking—what?
But the plateau just ahead and the one after
that and all the rest beyond had proved just as empty as those behind.
A bust. Whatever the unknown creatures were the
glider pilot had photographed, they would remain just that—unknown.
And yet as Ed slogged slowly up toward where
the porters were setting up the bright blue and yellow nylon tents, he was
nagged by a feeling that the odd-shaped pinnacle ahead looked awfully much like
the one in the blurred photograph. With his unfailing memory for pictures, Ed
remembered the tall, jagged cone that had cast a black shadow across a snowy
plateau, pointing direcdy toward the litde group that was in the center of the picture.
But Schenk wasn't having any more plateaus.
He shook his head vehemently, white-daubed lips a grim
line on his sun-blistered face. "Last camp, Ed," he said firmly.
"We
agreed this would be the final plateau. I'm already a week behind schedule. If
the monsoons hit us, we could be in serious trouble below. We have to get started
back. I know exactly how you feel, but I'm afraid this is it."
Later
that night, while the wind moved ceaselessly, sucking at the tent, they
burrowed in sleeping bags, talking.
"There
must be some basis of fact in those stories," Ed said to Dr. Schenk.
"I've given them a lot of thought. Has it occurred to you that every one
of the sightings, the few face-to-face meetings of the natives and these, these
unknowns, has generally been just around dawn and usually when the native was
alone?"
Schenk
smiled dubiously. "Whatever this creature may be—and I'm convinced that
it's either a species of large bear or one of the great anthropoids—it
certainly must keep off the well-traveled routes. There are very few passes
through these peaks, of course, and it would be quite simple for them to avoid
these locales."
"But we're not on any known trail,"
Ed said thoughtfully. "I believe our methods have been all wrong, stringing
out a bunch of men, looking for trails in the snow. All we've done is announce
our presence to anything with ears for miles around. That glider pilot made no
sound; he came on them without warning."
Ed
looked intently at Schenk. "I'd like to try that peak up ahead and the
plateau beyond." When Schenk'uttered
a protesting cry, Ed said, "Wait—this time I'll go alone with just one
Sherpa guide. We could leave several hours before daybreak. No
equipment, other than oxygen, food for one meal—and my cameras, of course.
Maintain a strict silence. We could be back before noon. Will you wait long
enough for this one last try?" Schenk hesitated. "Only a few hours
more," Ed urged.
Schenk
stared at him; then he nodded slowly. "Agreed.
But aren't you forgetting the most important item of all?" When Ed looked blank. Schenk smiled. "The
gas gun. If you should run across one, we'll need more proof than just
your word for it."
There
was very little wind, no moon, but cold, the cold approaching that of outer
space, as Ed and one Sherpa porter started away from the sleeping camp, up the
shattered floor of an ice river that swept down from the jagged peak ahead.
They
moved up, hearing only the squeak of equipment, the peculiar gritty sound of
crampons biting into packed snow, an occasional hollow crash of falling ice
blocks. To the east a faint line of gray was already visible; daylight was
hours away, but at this tremendous height sunrise came early. They moved
slowly, breathing through woolen masks, the thin air cutting cruelly into their
lungs, moving up, up.
They
stopped once for hot chocolate from a thermos, and Ed slapped the Sherpa's
shoulder, grinning, pointing ahead to where the jagged peak glowed pink and
gold in the first slanting rays of the sun. The Sherpa looked at the peak and
quickly shifted his glance to the sky. He gave a long, careful look at the gathering
clouds in the east, then muttered something, shaking
his head, pointing back, back down to where the camp was hidden in the inky
shadows of enormous boulders.
When
Ed resumed the climb, the Sherpa removed the long nylon line which had joined
them. The route was comparatively level, on a huge sweeping expanse of
snow-covered glacier that flowed about at the base of the peak.
The
Sherpa, no longer in the lead, began dropping behind as Ed pressed eagerly
forward.
The
sun was up, and with it the wind began keening again, bitterly sharp, bringing
with it a scent of coming snow. In the east, beyond the jagged peak just ahead,
the immense escarpment of the Himalayas was lost in approaching cloud. Ed hurried as best he could; it would snow, and soon. He'd have
to make better time.
But
above the sky was blue, infinitely blue, and behind, the sun was well up,
although the camp was still lost in night below. The peak thrust up ahead,
near, with what appeared to be a natural pass skirting its flank. Ed made for
it. As he circled an upthrust ridge of reddish rotten
rock, he glanced ahead. The plateau spread out before him, gently sloping, a
natural amphitheater full of deep smooth snow, with peaks surrounding it and
the central peak thrusting a long, black shadow directly across the center. He
paused, glancing back. The Sherpa had stopped well below him, his face a dark
blur, looking up, gesticulating frantically, pointing to the clouds. Ed
motioned, then moved around, leaning against the rock, peering ahead.
That
great shadow against the snow was certainly similar to the one in the photo,
only, of course, the shadow pointed west now, when later it would point
northwest as the sun swung to the south. And when it did, most certainly it was
the precise— He sucked in a sharp, lung-piercing breath.
He
stared, squinting against the rising wind that seemed to blow from earth's
outermost reaches. Three figures stirred slightly and suddenly leaped into
focus, almost per-fectiy camouflaged against the snow
and wind-blasted rock. Three figures not more than a hundred feet below him. Two small, one larger.
He leaned forward, his heart thudding
terribly at this twenty-thousand-foot height. A tremor of excitement shook him.
My god, it was true. They existed. He was looking at what was undeniably a
female and two smaller—what? Apes?
They were covered with downy hair, nearly
white, resembling nothing so much as tight-fitting leotards. The female was
exactly like any woman on earth except for the hair. No larger than most women,
with arms slightly longer, more muscular. Thighs heavier,
legs out of proportion to the trunk, shorter. Breasts
full and firm.
Not apes.
Hardly
breathing, Ed squinted, staring, motionless. Not apes. Not standing so erectly.
Not with those broad, high brows. Not with the undeniable intelligence of the
two young capering about their mother. Not—and seeing this, Ed trembled against
the freezing rock—not with the sudden affectionate sweep of the female as she
lifted the smaller and pressed it to her breast, smoothing back hair from its face
with a motion common to every human mother on earth. A
wonderfully tender gesture.
What
were they? Less than human? Perhaps.
He couldn't be certain, but he thought he heard a faint gurgle of laughter from
the female, fondling the small one, and the sound stirred him strangely. Dr.
Schenk had assured him that no animal was capable of genuine laughter; only
man.
But
they laughed, those three, and hearing it, watching the mother tickling the
youngest one, watching its delighted squirming, Ed knew that in that marvelous
little grouping below, perfectly lighted, perfectly staged, he was privileged
to observe one of earth's most guarded secrets.
He should get started shooting his pictures;
afterward, he should stun the group into unconsciousness with the gas gun and
then send the Sherpa back down for Dr. Schenk and the others. Clouds were
massing, immensities of blue black. Already the first few flakes of snow, huge,
wet, drifted against his face.
But for a long moment more he remained
motionless, oddly unwilling to do anything to destroy the harmony, the aching
purity of the scene below, so vividly etched in brilliant light and shadow. The
female, child slung casually on one hip, stood erect, hand shading her eyes,
and Ed grinned. Artless, but perfectly posed. She was
looking carefully about and above, scanning the great outcroppings of rock, obviously searching for something. Then she paused.
She was staring directly at
him.
Ed
froze, even though he knew he was perfectly concealed by the deep shadows of
the high cliff behind him. She was still looking directly at him, and then,
slowly, her hand came up.
She waved.
He
shivered uncontrollably in the biting wind, trying to remain motionless. The
two young ones suddenly began to jump up and down and show every
evidence of joy. And suddenly Ed knew.
He
turned slowly, very slowly, and with the sensation of a freezing knife plunging
deeply into his chest he saw the male less than five yards away.
It
was huge, by far twice the size of the female below. (And crazily Ed thought of
Schenk's little lecture, given what seemed like eons ago, six weeks before, in
the incredible tropical grove far below where rhododendrons grew in wild
profusion and enormous butterflies flitted above: "In primitive man,"
Schenk had said, "as in the great apes today, the male was far larger than
the female.")
The gas gun was hopelessly out of reach,
securely strapped to his shoulder pack. Ed stared, knowing there was absolutely
nothing he could do to protect himself before this creature, fully eight feet
tall, with arms as big as Ed's own thighs and eyes (My god—blue eyes!) boring into his. There was a light of savage intelligence
there—and something else.
The
creature (man?) made no move against him, and Ed stared at it, breathing
rapidly, shallowly and with difficulty, noting with his photographer's eyes
the immense chest span, the easy rise and fall of his breathing, the large,
square, white teeth, the somber cast of his face. There was long sandy fur on
the shoulders, chest and back, shortening to off-white over the rest of the
magnificent torso. Ears rather small and close to the head.
Short, thick neck, rising up from the broad shoulders to the
back of the head in a straight line. Toes long and
definitely prehensile.
They
looked silently at one another across the abyss of time and mystery. Man
and—what? How long, Ed wondered, had it stood there observing him? Why hadn't
it attacked? Had it been waiting for Ed to make a single threatening gesture
such as pointing a gun or camera? Seeing the calm awareness in those long,
slanting blue eyes, Ed sped a silent prayer of thanks upwards; most certainly
if he had made a move for camera or gun, that move would have been his last.
They
looked at one another through a curtain of falling snow, and suddenly there was
a perfect, instantaneous understanding between them. Ed made an awkward,
half-frozen little bow, moving backward. The great creature stood motionless,
merely watching, and then Ed did a strange thing: he held out his hands, palm
out, gave a wry grin and ducked quickly around the outcropping of rock and
began a plunging, sliding return, down the way he'd come. In spite of the
harsh, snow-laden wind, bitterly cold, he was perspiring.
Ed
glanced back once. Nothing. Only the thickening veil
of swift glowing snow blanking out the pinnacle, erasing every trace, every
proof that anyone, anything, had stood there moments before. Only
the snow, only the rocks, only the unending, wind-filled silence of the top of
the world.
Nothing
else.
The
Sherpa was struggling up to him from below, terribly anxious to get started
back; the storm was rising. Without a word they hooked up and began the
groping, stumbling descent back to the last camp. They found the camp already
broken, Sherpas already moving out. Schenk paused
only long enough to give Ed a questioning look.
What
could Ed say? Schenk was a scientist, demanding material proof. If not a corpse, at the very least a photograph. The only
photographs Ed had were etched in his mind, not on film. And even if he could
persuade Schenk to wait, when the storm cleared, the giant, forewarned, would
be gone. Some farther peak, some remoter plateau would echo to his young ones'
laughter.
Feeling
not a bit bad about it, Ed gave Schenk a barely perceptible negative nod.
Instantly Schenk shrugged, turned and went plunging down into the thickening
snow, back into the world of littler men. Ed trailed behind.
On
the arduous trek back through that first great storm, through the snowline,
through the rain forest, hot and humid, Ed thought of the giant, back up there
where the air was thin and pure.
Who,
what were he and his race? Castaways on this planet, forever marooned, yearning
for a distant, never-to-be-reached home7
Or
did they date in unbroken descent from the Pleistocene, man's first beginning,
when all the races of not-quite-man were giants, unable or unwilling to take
the fork in the road that led to smaller, cleverer man; forced to retreat
higher and higher, to more and more remote areas, until finally there was only
one corner of earth left to them—the high Himalayas?
Or were he and his kind earth's last reserves; not-yet-men,
waiting for the opening of still another chapter in earth's unending mystery
story?
Whatever
the giant was, his secret was safe with him, Ed thought. For who would believe
it even if he chose to tell?
Nine Days to Die
I swam up out of
sleep like a swimmer from
deep underwater, emerging with a gasp. The phone was ringing in my ear, and I
groped for it.
"Is
this Commander EUiston, permanent officer of the
day?"
"Yes,
yes," I said. The luminous dial of the clock radio pointed at a quarter to
four. In the a.m.
"This
is Lieutenant Mclntyre, sir. Temporary
O.D. I'm in the Administration Building. There are two security officers
here with a patient. A civilian— Just a moment,
sir."
Another voice, quick, crisp, wide-awake. "This is Captain Blankenship. Naval Intelligence. We have a highly classified emergency on
our hands, and we need you, Commander, immediately."
"Give me ten
minutes," I said.
Lieutenant
Mclntyre was busily filling out the forms the Navy
supplies in quantity when I came into the office. Three men were standing
before the desk: two of them tall, lean men in civilian clothes; the other
shorter than average, thick, curly hair, well-muscled, holding himself with the
grace and ease of a well-co-ordinated athlete. But he
was barefoot, wearing only an old beat-up trench coat. Naked,
stark, hairy naked underneath.
They turned when I came in and one of them
said,
66
"Commander
Elliston?" I nodded, and he produced the familiar flat card case, flipped
it open, then shut, but not before I saw the usual identification card. Naval Intelligence.
"I'm Captain Blankenship." He
gestured toward the other tall man. "This is Captain Trumbull, security
officer from the A.E.C. lab in Livermore." He pointed to the man, naked
under the trench coat. "This is our patient, Mr. Joseph Vitali."
The
phone rang, and Trumbull scooped it up and began talking in a guarded voice.
Captain Blankenship leaned toward me. "We'll want maximum security on
this," he said. "This man is sick—or rather, we have good reason to
believe he's going to be sick. Very sick. And what he has
is classified. Highly."
I
looked with greater interest at Joe Vitali. He looked
back, teeth clenched, and I saw then that he was holding himself in control
with a great effort.
"Look,
Commander—maybe you'll listen," he said. "All right, I was feeling a
little sick and dizzy, but I feel fine now. And I've got a load of produce
waiting to be picked up in Tracy and brought back to San Francisco before the
market opens. A few more hours and they'll wilt on me."
He
spread his hands wide, big hands, capable, strong-looking. "I've already
paid for those vegetables. I stand to lose a lot, and I can't afford to lose
that kind of money. I've got a wife, a child. Payments on the
truck."
I
turned to Blankenship. "He seems all right. What's the nature of his
ailment?"
The
agent glanced at Lieutenant Mclntyre, then leaned
closer to me and said softly, "Prolonged exposure to radioactive
material."
I stared at him, then
back at Joe Vitali. Truck owner,
small businessman. He stood, shifting uncomfortably on the carpet. What
possible connection could he have with the top-secret by-products of an atomic
pile?
"That's
right; in Livermore," Trumbull, the officer on the phone, was saying.
"Tell him it is an extreme emergency." He listened, and there was
total silence in the room for an instant. "Preferably
Dr. Klemmer. I know it's four in the morning.
Ring him and tell him this: there was an accident concerning the waste
material. An accident in transit. Yes, a man was exposed.
Captain Blankenship is handling. Naval Intelligence.
He'll be here."
He
hung up. He began dialing again. "Radiation control," he said
flatly, and I reached for the forms Mclntyre had been
filling in. I slowly began tearing them up, listening to the security officer
telling someone at Hunter's Point Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in San
Francisco to have an entire decontamination unit rushed to a spot on Oakmont
Road, a lonely little road some miles between Livermore and Oakland.
I
looked at Joe Vitali. He stared back, clear-eyed,
handsome, thick, curly hair matting his head. It was then I noticed a fine
sprinkling of some coarse gritty material, a little like powdered charcoal, or
ashes, on his hair and in his ears. He was perspiring.
Trumbull
left for the Oakmont area immediately. Dr* Klemmer
arrived within the hour. Tall, spare, an intent, serious man, he was not a
medical doctor. He was a physicist, nuclear physicist, an advance researcher
working at the Atomic Energy Commission installation at Livermore, California.
He carried some complicated apparatus in a square carrying case. He took Joe Vitali into a corner and went over him with a wand
connected to the apparatus in the case—a scintillation counter. He made careful
notes, questioning Joe. Then he came over to the rest of us, still holding the
wand and apparatus.
He
glanced at his dials, made more notes. Then he said to me, "Will you make
arrangements for Mr. Vitali to be kept here for—" he glanced at Joe—"for
observation? You understand about security?" I nodded. He glanced at his
watch, his forehead wrinkling. "We have a team of specialists. I called
them. Should be getting here soon."
I
made arrangements for Joe Vitali to be sent up to one
of the new private wards, high up on the hill above the cluster of hospital
buildings in the hollow below. It had a magnificent view of the San Francisco
Bay complex— and privacy. The Marine guards would see to that. Then I called
for the corpsmen to take Joe.
"Tell
them to wear masks and gloves," Klemmer said.
"Destroy them by burning immediately afterward. Bury the ashes."
They
took Joe away, and Dr. Klemmer, sounding somewhat
agitated, said to Blankenship, "The accident happened only a little after
midnight. It's now nearly five o'clock. Do you understand what this delay might
mean?"
"Trumbull
notified me less than an hour ago," Blankenship said. He took out his
notebook. "I'll give you the details as he gave them to me." He
broke off and turned to me. "Would you ask the lieutenant to leave the room,
Commander?"
When
Mclntyre left, the agent closed the door behind him
and locked it. He came back. "You'll need to know anyway, Commander,"
he told me. He rubbed his face tiredly and began talking.
"There
is an Atomic Energy Commission installation at Livermore, California, a small,
pleasant town in the hills east of San Francisco Bay. Like every plant, they
have waste products, but their waste is radioactive: tools which become
contaminated, rags, empty containers and fission products, such as 'hot' fuel
elements no longer usable and by-products of experiments that must be
discarded.
"Some
of the more dangerous material is stored in specially selected areas, diluted
in millions of gallons of water in huge underground concrete tanks. The rest is
carefully gathered together, put into shielded containers, filled with
concrete, and when enough of them have accumulated, they are loaded onto
trucks and driven to one of the ports on San Francisco Bay—usually Oakland—
loaded onto barges, taken far out to sea and dumped."
"Last
night," Klemmer interrupted, "the waste was
a special load—the residual ash of an experiment we felt too dangerous to
continue. Dumping at sea was the quickest and least risky method of disposal
available to us. So the load was sent late at night in a single fast truck by
the back roads." He looked at the counter. "In this case Oakmont
Road."
"As
I got the story," Blankenship continued, "there is a railroad
underpass along Oakmont Road that dips down. It had been raining heavily, as
you know, and as the truck driver approached the underpass, he saw a man at the
entrance waving at him. And beyond, in the underpass, a
stalled truck. The man, Joe Vitali, was
barefoot, with his trousers rolled up; there were a couple of feet of water in
the underpass, and he'd removed his shoes."
Klemmer gave a muffled groan,
and the agent hesitated. Then he went on: "It was a narrow road; the
driver was going pretty fast. He skidded, hit the side of the underpass and
some of the containers bounced out of the truck and smashed on the concrete
support. One of them split open, and apparently the contents sprayed over Vitali."
There
was a silence, and I looked at Dr. Klemmer. He was
shaking his head slowly.
"The
driver, a tech from the plant, wasn't hurt," the agent continued,
"and of course he warned Vitali about touching
anything and asked him if any of the stuff had gotten on him."
The agent, frowning, turned a page of his
notebook. "Vitali told him not to worry; he was
okay; there was a lot of spraying water, and he might
not have felt the material sifting over him. In any event, it was a lonely
road after midnight and both trucks inoperable. So Vitali
remained there while the tech walked to the first farmhouse he could find. It
took a long time. He called the plant. Trumbull was on duty, so he came out
with another truck and crew. They brought a Geiger counter and found then that
the water in the underpass, the concrete supports,
both trucks and especially Vitali were highly
radioactive."
Blankenship
closed his notebook with a snap. "They took what measures they
could." He smiled grimly. "It wasn't easy to persuade Vitali to take off his clothes and scrub himself in a
nearby ditch. He's a pretty strong person. But he did it. Then they brought him
on here."
"Is he badly
contaminated?" I asked Klemmer.
"I'm
afraid he is," he said shortly. "The level of radiation in this room
is well above normal background count just from his expelled breath." He
pointed to the rug. "Where he walked, where he stood, the rug is
contaminated beyond the safety level." He turned to Blankenship.
"Your hands should be thoroughly scrubbed with hard soap; nails trimmed
and cleaned to the quick. Discard your clothing."
"My god!" I said. "What was in the containers?
What is it?"
"I can't tell
you," Klemmer said. "That's
classified."
"What about his
chances?" Blankenship said.
Klemmer
shook his head. "If I knew the amount of total-body ionizing radiation
he'd absorbed, I could answer that. I don't. It'll take time to compute it.
And meanwhile—"
He
hesitated. "There's a man at Berkeley. Klein. Really one
of the best in the world on acute radiation sickness. I understand he
has a completely new approach to the treatment. Something to
do with controlling the free radicals in the cells. Of course he'll come
over. This will be his first opportunity to try it. It could be of immeasurable
importance—"
Klein,
sharp-eyed, easily the youngest professional in the group, brought with him a
team of radiation specialists. They had some elaborate equipment from Stanford
for substituting whole blood, while withdrawing the contaminated blood. He
also had a list of consultants. Two of them were in Japan. One
in Switzerland. One was in the antarctic.
After
several showers and hard-soap scrubbings, they cut all of Joe Vitali's hair off. They shaved his body. He was given
enemas, protesting furiously. He felt fine. Excellent.
All he wanted was out, so he could pick up bis load
of produce and get home to the family.
Suddenly
he turned pale, vomited, and felt not so fine. After an hour or so, he was
feeling fit again.
By
noon a crack Navy crew had set up direct lines to the Navy main communications
center. From there the calls from the hospital would be relayed to Switzerland,
to Japan, to the antarctic if necessary.
That was the first day—the
beginning.
On
the second day other crews came in: sober, quick-moving men, carrying much
equipment. They burned Joe's hair and clothing and made a series of tests of
the ashes. They looked at one another, serious-faced. The first calls went out
soon after that to Washington for all the data accumulated on the three other
comparable cases which had occurred at Los Alamos: two, some years ago; one,
only a year or so ago.
On
the third night after Joe's admission I went in to see him, to get his
signature on some papers. I hadn't seen him since the first night.
He
was sitting up, banked in pillows, bald head gleaming under the dim night
light. He was staring sadly out the window. Beyond, the lights of the Bay
Bridge gleamed, a double strand of amber pearls. Between two towers the
green-lighted clock of the Ferry Building was clearly visible, and beyond that Coit Tower thrust up a luminous beckoning finger from
Telegraph Hill.
I came closer; he turned, and I tried to keep
the shock out of my voice as I greeted him. He was red. A
deep, violent shade, frightening to see.
He
recognized me and smiled, his teeth flashing white in his boiled-pink face. He
saw the expression in my eyes and he held out his arms. The fingers looked
puffy, the wrists greatly swollen.
"It's
crazy," he whispered. "They told Madge, my wife, I'd had an accident,
and they had me here for observation." He grimaced wryly. "She thinks
I hit my head or something. But she'll know different next time she visits me.
Look—I'm like I'm all sunburned or something." He looked at me, and
suddenly, for a brief instant, his eyes widened. He seemed to look beyond me,
far, far beyond. "I'm kinda hot, all
inside."
"That's only natural," I told him
with all the cheerfulness I could muster in the face of that shocking, that
indescribably obscene red skin. I looked at his chart. The temp showed a slowly
accelerating rise.
A
jet fired up from Alameda Naval Airfield, and he
looked out the window, listening as the jet roared louder and louder, until
suddenly its afterburner kicked in. There was a loud babloom! that shook the windows, then the receding
echoing roar of its progress up and over the bay.
He
smiled, still looking out of the window. "I used to want to fly the
jets," he said, "but I got the life now." He pointed, raising
his muscular arm rather painfully, gesturing to the myriad lights of San
Francisco. "Ever see the old produce market in San Francisco?"
"Never,"
I told him, studying his face. He was far away again.
"You'd
laugh," he said softly. "All night long the big rigs come in from the
valley. Artichokes, lettuce, spinach, carrots. Fresh, still wet from the fields. They dump them on the
sidewalks and those crazy paisanos run around bidding on the stuff. Yelling, waving their hands, lights
shining down from those old buildings that have been there since before the
fire and earthquake. And by six o'clock the street's empty again." He
shook his head, grinning. "I'll be glad to get back."
On
the fourth day his temperature reached 103. Antibiotics were administered intravenously.
Sternal punctures were made frequently: small samples
of bone marrow drawn from the chest area. They showed the first sign of
deterioration of the bone marrow, the red-blood cell manufacturers. The white
blood cells, the infection fighters, though still seriously depleted, showed a
definite rise in count. The strong body was marshaling all its forces.
And
the Navy was mustering all its forces. A constant stream of specialists was
flown in from all over the nation. There was a twenty-four hour radio set-up,
and the most brilliant and experienced men in the field were consulted. A
continuous check was kept on all Joe's bodily functions; a great mass of charts
and data was being accumulated.
And
through it all he suffered. He was packed in ice; his body, one great burn, an
impossible fuchsia shade.
On the fifth day they moved his wife, Madge,
into a room in an adjacent ward. She wasn't allowed to see him anymore, but she
wanted to be near him. I met her; a plain girl, hollow-eyed, but controlled, with
great sweetness of spirit. And quick-minded. Intelligent.
They'd
told her about the true cause of Joe's condition, and I noticed on the table in
her room several books and government pamphlets, all dealing with atomic
radiation. She must have picked them up at the hospital library.
"Joe
mentioned you a lot," she said to me. "He thinks you're a
gentleman." A smile, brief but lovely, passed her lips. "Joe's
finest compliment."
"I'm
honored," I said, and I was, genuinely. "The Naval Academy made me a
gentleman by congressional act," I told her, "but Joe—he comes by it
naturally."
Suddenly
she sat down, her face averted. "He really is, you know," she said
finally. "He's—he's kind and gentle. He's strong, and he knows it, but he
never takes advantage of his strength."
She
put her hand on one of the pamphlets which had been stamped "Secret,"
crossed out and re-stamped "Declassified." A
treatise on the effect of gamma rays on bioplasm—living
cells.
"The cause of this accident," she
said. "This—this unnatural substance— Were they
really going to dump that into the ocean?"
"Yes," I told her. "We're
still earthbound, Mrs. Vitali. Until they find some
way to launch this stuff into outer space, dumping it into the ocean is one way
to dispose of it."
She looked troubled. "How can they
deposit it on the ocean bottom and be certain it will remain there? Something
unexpected might corrode it. An upheaval might wash it ashore where people
swim. Or break it up and contaminate fish life, and through fish, us. How can
they be so certain it's safe?"
"It's
in heavily shielded containers," I said, "filled with concrete. They
dump it far out, into deep holes. Eventually the silt buries it; the material
loses its radioactivity and becomes harmless—given enough time."
On
the sixth day there was a sudden ominous drop in Joe's white blood cell count.
His temperature was 104. Symptoms of acute jaundice appeared, along with the accompanying
liver and spleen breakdown. He had lost much weight. He lay
there, the focal point of a network of tubes: tubes in his nostrils, tubes in
his arms, ankles. Klein was hard at work.
Along
with Klein's new treatment, others had been tried. The most promising, the
injection of uncontaminated bone marrow taken directly from donors,
had proven unsuccessful. He was unable to tolerate it.
On
the seventh and eighth day Joe Vitali seemed to
rally. It was only comparative, of course. Packed entirely in ice, he was a
shrunken travesty of the man who had stood before me a week before, clad only
in an old trench coat. A good deal of his skin was gone, sloughed away.
His
eyes were mucus-filled, blind. His tongue, a raw billet
filling his mouth.
But still he moved. He made sounds. The
precipitous decline in red and white blood cells momentarily halted. He
rallied, fighting, his will to live surging in one last magnificent struggle.
In the annex to the private ward where Joe Vitali lay, the doctors and specialists concerned with him
had set up a sort of headquarters. Because he was intimately familiar with all
the facts in hand, Dr. Klemmer had been made co-ordinator of this group.
On
the evening of the eighth day when I went off duty, I found a note asking me to
see Dr. Klemmer. I found him in the annex with
several other physicists. They had sheets of paper covered with the weird
hieroglyphics of their science. He nodded at me, and I noted how drawn, tired
he looked.
An
attempt had been made, he told me, to evaluate the relative dose of radiation Vitali had absorbed, by computing the original amount of
material in the total experiment from which the waste had originally come. The mass, rate of emission of neutrons, gamma rays, and so on and
finally the amount in each waste container. A
tremendously difficult problem, and only now had some sort of a result been
arrived at.
"Is it very high?" I asked.
"Enormously
so," he said. "Allowing for even a twenty-five per cent error in
computation, he still received an amount of total-body radiation that should
have been fatal three days ago. The last comparable case, at Los Alamos
incidentally, resulted in death in a little over seventy-two hours after
exposure."
"Then Klein's
treatment is succeeding."
He gave me a quick look. "We'd like to
think it can succeed—in less extreme cases, of course. In connection with this,
Klein is setting up some highly sensitive experiments to be made immediately
upon demise, and—"
"Demise? But he's rallying—"
He
took a paper from his pocket and looked at it broodingly. "His vital
force, his will to live, is overwhelmingly powerful. But he's only flesh and
blood, Commander, like the rest of us." He handed me the paper. "I'd
appreciate it if you would obtain Mrs. Vitali's
signature on this. We'll need this permission before Klein can go ahead with
his final experiments. It's best to have it in advance."
I
unfolded it and glanced at it. It was a request for permission to perform a
special autopsy upon the remains of Joe Vitali.
"Are they this
certain?" I said.
"They
are," he said bleakly. "You might explain to her that it will be of
inestimable value to perform the experiments as soon after demise as possible.
I believe she'll understand." He hurried off.
Holding
the paper, I walked slowly over to the next ward. Passing the nurse's desk I
asked if Mrs. Vitali was in her room.
"She's
in the chapel, sir," she said. "You can probably find her
there." She lifted the cover on a small gold lapel watch and consulted it.
"Nine thirty. She's usually there until after ten."
"Thank
you," I said. I looked at the paper in my hand. "If you see her when
she returns, tell her I'll drop in about ten thirty to see her. It's
important."
"I'll make it a point
to do so, sir."
At
ten thirty I knocked on Madge Vitali's door, and she
opened it immediately. She held the door open, darting a quick glance at the
paper I held as I walked into the room. She was thinner; her eyes seemed much
larger, with great, dark circles under them.
She
sank down on a chair, and I sat across the table from her. The books and
pamphlets were still there, a carafe of water, two large red pills in a
transparent box. I put the paper, still folded, next to the pill box.
"I'm
sorry to have to bring you this," I told her. "Before you read it,
may I explain why I'm here; why your signature on this paper is so necessary to
us now?"
She
darted another glance at the paper, then clasped her hands tightly, moistening
her lips. She nodded slowly.
"You've
been reading these pamphlets. You know, I'm sure, about roentgens, the unit of
measurement for radiation. And I believe you know that the body can stand only
so many roentgens at one time—about six hundred roentgens in one dose to the
total body is usually fatal."
I
hesitated. She slowly closed her eyes, but said nothing.
"They
know now, Mrs. Vitali, that your husband absorbed
over his entire body many times that amount."
She
opened her eyes. The pupils were huge, black. She looked steadily at me, still
not speaking.
"Mrs.
Vitali, do you understand what I'm trying to
say?"
"Yes,"
she said. "Joe is dead." "No," I said, "but—"
"Joe
is dead." Her voice was low, oddly controlled. "His heart still
beats. He can feel pain, deep inside. He breathes. But he's dead. He died eight
days ago, standing on a road trying to get help so he could push his truck out
of a puddle. Because he was proud of his job. Because
he felt it a point of honor to bring back the vegetables fresh and crisp and
green. To feed people. It pleased him. He liked
people."
She stopped. Two tears glistened on her
cheeks.
"I'm
sorry, Mrs. Vitali," I said. "I don't mean
to be callous. But what you say is true. From the amount of total-body ionizing
radiation your husband absorbed— yes. Death is inevitable. In all truth, he
should have died several days ago. They believe your husband has lived this
long because of a new treatment devised by one of the specialists. A Dr. Klein.
If this is true, then it means great hope for any future victims of radiation
sickness."
I slowly unfolded the
paper, slid it over in front of her.
"But
they can't be certain until they perform final and very delicate experiments.
The equipment to do this must be set up in advance, because the sooner these
experiments are completed, the more certain they can be of the results of
Klein's work. But of course they'll need your permission. Your
signature on this paper."
She
picked up the paper, read it swiftiy, then folded it
carefully and placed it back alongside the pill box. Her face was very pale.
"No," she
whispered, "no more."
"Mrs. Vitali—"
"No."
Her voice shook, that odd control slipping away. She put a hand on the
pamphlets. "I haven't seen him since the third day, but I know what
agonies he's suffered. The indignities. The distortions, the eating away. God gave him a perfect
body. Strong. Strong and beautiful
and filled with love. Love for me, our child. For
life. This was what kept him alive—his love. And my
prayers."
Suddenly
her eyes were burning. "Do they think they can find that with their
instruments? Have they learned how to measure a man's immortal soul? They? They who defiled God's perfect gift, just as they're defiling the earth,
pouring their filth into the ocean beds, contaminating the very womb of
life."
Tears, slow, great tears, began rolling down
her face. But still she sat upright, facing me, and the words came faster.
"With every rain their pollution comes
down. With every breath we take we draw into our vulnerable tissues their
greatest gift to us—Strontium 90; reducing our life span, blasting our genes,
dooming our progeny to monstrous, twisted lives."
She
stopped, biting her lips. Her hands were trembling. I poured some water into a
glass, took one of-the pills out of the box and held it out.
"Take it, please, Mrs.
Vitali. It'll help."
She
shook her head, and suddenly she was shivering. "They've had him. For
eight days they've had him. But when he dies, he's mine. And I won't let them
touch him again. Ever."
She
snatched up the paper, crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the
wastebasket alongside the table. Then she put her hands over her face and began
sobbing, her shoulders jerking convulsively.
I
sat there. She cried with tiny muffled gasps, the sounds falling like weights
into the quiet room. Finally she finished, took a deep shuddering breath, then began wiping her face with the palms of her hands. She
looked very young at that moment.
"Mrs.
Vitali," I said, "please don't
think I'm pressing you to sign that paper. You have every right to refuse. But
I want to say this: The material your husband was exposed to is a by-product of
one of the primal forces of the universe. The potential for evil locked in
these forces is too awful even to contemplate—and yet, Mrs. Vitali,
you believe in a good and just God, as we all do. You cannot believe He gave us
our inquisitive, searching minds only to enable us to discover new and more
horrible ways to destroy one another. There has to be another, a nobler purpose
behind this force. And there is. That is what they were doing at Livermore with
the material Joe was exposed to—seeking new ways to develop the power of that
force for the good of all people."
I
stood up, leaning over her. "But this is a divided world, Mrs. Vitali. Another nation also has this force, and they deny
there is any God but their own might. And because of them, we all stood on that
road eight days ago with your husband. And whatever Dr. Klein can learn from
Joe's tremendous struggle we, the people he liked so much, we
will be the ones to benefit. We who still survive."
I
waited, but she made no move, sitting upright, arms resting limply on the
table, looking straight ahead. When I left, she was still in that position.
I
went over to the ward annex to report my failure to Dr. Klemmer.
But he was gone. The tiny cubicle the physicians had used was already
dismantled. The place was clean, antiseptic-smelling again.
A
new medical team was present: pathologists, men who specialized in minute
examination of dead bone and tissue. Theirs would be the final report.
In
the room with Joe, Klein and the others were hard at work, trying to sustain
the feeble flutter of life that still pulsed within the ravaged body, a flutter
that had weakened perceptibly iri the past hour.
Dr.
Klemmer had said it: Joe Vitali
was flesh and blood like the rest of us. His blood count plummeted; white blood
cells, red blood cells, all the marvelously complex
interacting system now a watery solution of dead and dying cells. The bone
marrow throughout his body was disintegrating, torn apart under the ionizing
impact of hard radiation. Liver breakdown was now complete. Spleen
and kidneys failing rapidly. He lay quietly, unmoving, deep in the final
coma.
Klein
took the news of Madge Vitali's refusal to sign the
authorization with a thoughtful frown.
"It's
possible," he said, "that she still feels there's some hope; that
this request is premature. Perhaps later she might agree." He hesitated,
looking suddenly tired. "I'll make you out another request for
authorization."
"Then you want me to
try—later?"
"If you will, Commander." He looked at his watch. "It could be
some hours yet. You might as well try to get some sleep. I'll call you."
I
waited for the new permit for Madge's signature; then I left.
Once
again I swam up from a deep sleep, groping instinctively for the ringing phone
before I came fully awake.
It was Dr. Klein. Joe Vitali was dead.
I
glanced at the clock. Twelve minutes past two. In the a.m. The ninth day almost to the
hour since Joe Vitali had stood on a lonely road,
watching an approaching truck, arms waving in man's immemorial gesture for
assistance.
"Has
Mrs. Vitali been notified?" I asked Dr. Klein.
She had, he said. "Give me twenty minutes," I said.
I
dressed and stepped outside. A chill wind blew gustily. Clouds, black and low,
were scudding across the bay, obscuring the bridge lights. I walked slowly up
the winding road toward the private ward where lights flared brilliantly and
shadows moved against shuttered windows.
I
went into the adjacent ward. The only light was the dim night light above the
nurse's desk. She rose swiftly as I came in, her starched uniform rustling in
the stillness.
"Mrs.
Vitali?" she asked. I nodded, and she said,
"She's not here, sir. She left right after they told her the news— about
her husband, I mean."
"Left? Did she say where she was going?"
The
nurse gave me an odd look. "Why, to the chapel, sir."
"Yes, of course,"
I said.
Outside
a fine mist was falling. I hurried down the road. The mist became a light rain,
a steady, silent downpour by the time I reached the chapel. And then I saw her.
She was standing outside the chapel, her back to me, her forehead pressed
against the chapel door. She turned when I approached, her face a pale oval in
the dimness.
"Mrs.
Vitali," I said, "the door is open. The
chapel is never locked."
"I
know," she said, her voice calm, very soft. "I was waiting. I hoped
you'd come."
Standing
there in the murmuring rain, I said, "I very deeply regret Joe's death,
Mrs. Vitali."
She
was silent for a moment; then she said, "After you left last night, I
finally understood what you were trying to tell me. And I'm grateful to you. I
know now there is a meaning, and purpose, in Joe's death. To deny that would be
to deny—" She stopped and
touched the chapel door with her fingertips. Then she opened her bag and handed
me an envelope. "I wanted you to have this before I go inside."
She turned and opened the door. A warm gust
of air,
fragrant with incense, washed over me; in the brief
light raindrops glistened like gems in her hair. As she slipped inside, for an
instant I saw her face. The lines of suffering were gone.
I
opened the envelope. Inside was the authorization to perform the special
autopsy, the one she'd crumpled into a ball and thrown into the wastebasket. It
had been smoothed out and carefully refolded.
She had signed it.
The Secret of the Terrible Titans
Mr.
George Papadoukalis
Ocean
College Alumni Association
Ocean
City, California
Dear
Mr. Papadoukalis:
Herewith,
written in some haste, is my report on Pacific Underwater College's
"Terrible Titans," the incredible group of athletes which has
flattened every rival (including yourself) in the
coast league.
I
regret you found it necessary to insist upon this report before taking up the
matter of the additional funds I requested by wire last night. The results of
my efforts in your and the alumni's behalf will speak for themselves next
season. You have but to read the following to realize that much more than mere
money is at stake. I know you will be more than generous.
In
the event you still have some doubts after reading this, may I ask you to
review the score of the last game O.C. played with Pacific: 112 to 0, was it
not? Bear with me.
As
a starter, I attempted to get some fingerprints of Sam Bama,
Pacific's star, and the first of the Terrible Titans to enroll there. You will
be as surprised as I to discover the man has no fingerprints. I mean to say,
his fingers are blank, smooth expanses of skin. Furthermore,
86
when
I casually handed him my solid silver (plated) cigarette case (the one our
grateful alumni gave me several seasons ago when I uncovered the flagrant case
of prosely-tism going on at B.U.), he fumbled with it
and acted generally like someone who's never even seen a cigarette, let alone
a solid silver (platea1) case. But, as I say, no
fingerprints. Keep this in mind.
Bama, I might add in passing, speaks rather
cultured English with a strong Oxford accent. His eyes are somewhat pinkish
and his hair quite white. Albino characteristics.
However, I've never before met an albino
somewhat over seven feet tall, lightning fast and weighing three hundred
pounds. He has no neck to speak of, massive sloping shoulders and arms surely
no thicker than my thighs. Also, he has a pronounced body odor—something like a
musk ox. (They have one at the zoo, and for purposes of comparison I went
around there. Oddly enough, after some hours of sniffing, I discovered the
closest similar odor came not from the musk ox, but from a yak. The significance
of this failed to dawn upon me until just last night.)
Pacific's
phenomenal athletic record this season can be laid at the door of one
man—Professor Harold Crimshaw. You may well ask what
a professor of physics has to do with, your being unmercifully trounced in the
bowl last New Year's but the facts, as uncovered by me, are these:
Professor
Crimshaw, a bachelor in his late forties, is a
specialist on cosmic-ray research. He often spends his spare time and what
funds he can drum up trudging about the higher mountains of the globe,
capturing cosmic rays and measuring their intensity. As you might guess, very
few people are interested enough in captured cosmic rays to finance
expeditions, so up until the winter before last Professor Crimshaw
operated on a strictly low budget.
I
say up until the winter before last, because after that, things suddenly
changed. He arrived back on the campus shortly after the holidays, accompanied
by a small dark man with a beard and a huge box, punched with air holes, which
must have weighed well over three hundred pounds.
Also,
the box (as I was able to ascertain myself) gave off a powerful odor. In fact
investigation disclosed that Professor Moriarty of biology inquired if perhaps
Professor Crimshaw hadn't brought back a live musk
ox. The question remained unanswered. The small bearded man was equally
inscrutable.
Shortly
after that, Moriarty, Dr. Evans (president of P.U.) and Dr. Smythe-Smythe,
head of the language department, on loan from Oxford University, were all seen
going into Professor Crimshaw's bachelor quarters; I
have since managed to gain entry by a ruse and can testify that even to this
day a strong odor, as of a pen-ned-up musk ox or yak,
still permeates the atmosphere.
By
careful (and guarded, of course) inquiry I have learned that shortly thereafter
one Oscar Grossgudt, a wholesale butcher and one of
the few alumni of P.U. worth a line in Dun & Bradstreet, was seen lingering
about Crimshaw's quarters. Subsequently, one of his
delivery trucks made daily deliveries to Crimshaw's
home; but whatever was delivered was concealed beneath a canvas wrapper.
Suffice it to say, however, that discreet queries disclosed the fact that
quantities of bones were carted away daily—say, about that left over from half
a haunch of well-gnawed beef.
George
Sneedely, P.U.'s football and wrestling coach, along
with his assistant, Daniel McGurk (known to you as
"Goon" McGurk), were seen entering and
leaving Crimshaw's quarters frequently. On one
occasion McGurk was seen noticeably limping and
holding his shoulder, although Sneedely seemed in the
best of spirits. In fact he was smiling, something he
hasn't done since '45, the year Pacific won one and tied one (although losing
twelve).
It was less than a month afterward that Sam Bama was enrolled officially at P.U. as Crimshaw's
protégé. He was (and is) amiable, quick-witted, with
an I.Q. of 128. (Rorschach not available.) Well-liked by all, including the girls, most of whom preferred not
to date him.
In
his first football game, as the alumni of State well know, he scored every time
he was given the ball, which, mercifully, was only seventeen times. Sneedely is a
kind-hearted chap, retiring Bama to the bench only
after he was informed during the half that two of the opponent defenders
suffered severe skull fractures, incurred as Bama
stepped on their heads. Fortunately he was not wearing shoes.
After the game Bama gladly granted press
interviews, winning the scribes' hearts with his easy banter. He skillfully parried all queries as to his
prep school, although hints were dropped by Sneedely
that Bama was a transferee from "overseas."
It
was directly after this first game that Crimshaw's
great expedition to measure cosmic rays was announced. He was given special
leave of absence. Where he was going was left unmentioned, however. Clippings
enclosed.
I
can tell you that after considerable checking I was able to learn that money
for this expedition (a large sum in fact—please note) had been advanced by a
small clique of P.U. alumni, consisting in the main of Oscar Grossgudt and one Pete DeLassio,
a gentleman connected with a gambling syndicate, the same syndicate which took
all bets in advance on the entire schedule of P.U. and which really cleaned up,
as doubtless you know.
The
expedition was organized with great secrecy, but I have since learned that the
entire staff of the manual arts department worked overtime building ten stout
packing cases, complete with air holes.
The
expedition returned last summer, slipping quietly into town late one evening.
However, there were frequent complaints that evening by the citizenry that
howls and roars were coming from the direction of the freight yards. A sound,
as one local put it, exactly like feeding time at the zoo.
And last autumn, of course, P.U. fielded
their incredible "Terrible Titans" which remained unscored
upon—but why am I telling you this? You know what they did to the rest of the
league.
To
a man, the Terrible Titans all look amazingly alike —each a little over seven
feet tall, each weighing well over three hundred pounds. They are all albinos,
I can say positively, even though (as I can prove) they wear colored contact
lenses. Also, in order to further conceal their identical appearance, each has
his hair dyed a different shade, and some even have their skin darkened. They
use prodigious quantities of deodorants and are quite popular with the girls.
Earlier
I mentioned that Professor Crimshaw, winter before
last, had returned with a small dark man with a beard and a huge box. This
little man vanished about the time of the great expedition and just as
mysteriously reappeared when the expedition returned.
By great good luck I ran across the little
dark man only last night. He was in a pub, unnoticed, morose, drinking whisky
sours and obviously disliking them. I fell into deep conversation with him, and
what he had to say was startling indeed; no amount of whisky sours could
account for it. It has to be true. It all fits.
He
is a Sherpa: one of those breed of slight, tough men who make a business of
climbing the high mountains of the Himalayas. Between whisky sours he sobbed
out his desire to go back; he says he is one of the few men alive who knows the
haunts of the Yeti—the abominable snow men, so called; those giant, strangely
manlike creatures of myth (or mystery?) who roam the inaccessible peaks. He
speaks their language, he says. They are shy, nimble creatures but extremely
intelligent withal. Loyal to a fault, they would follow him anywhere, he
assures me.
Many
were the times, he says, they spent bounding about the great peaks, chasing
yaks for food and fun. But, alas, all too human-like, once they tasted the
dubious joys of civilization, they forgot the old ways. They became decadent;
they looked upon him, their old friend, as old-fashioned—in a word, a cornball
(an epithet much favored at P.U. this season).
He
longed to go back, he sobbed. Back to his yaks and untutored
Yeti.
And
so we're going back, Mr. Papadoukalis. Fortunately,
I have my credit card. I'm writing this from San Francisco International
Airport. We expect to reach Katmandu, India, on or about the twelfth of the
month.
Please
wire sufficient funds to outfit a good-sized expedition to reach an altitude of
approximately twenty-six thousand feet. Also, make sure you include enough to
cover the cost of at least eleven good-sized
packing cases, strong enough to hold over three hundred pounds each.
Mum's
the word, and come next season we'll have a surprise for Pacific, if you
follow me, and I'm sure you do.
Yours
in haste,
J. Ponder
Prop., Ponder Detective Agency
Invasion
The
enormous silver swept-winged bomber slipped through the thin air, miles above the earth,
heavy-bellied, graceful in the manner a smooth-muscled Bengal tiger or
thirty-six foot shark is graceful-Full of power, a thing of swift, implacable
purpose.
She
carried just one bomb, a bomb so huge it crowded even the immense ribbed belly
of the jet.
She
carried ten men whose aggregate age was less than three hundred years.
She
flew alone. She flew high. She flew with the speed of sound, leaving a thin,
icy trail and the flash of brilliance from the setting sun to mark her passage.
"Altitude,
sixty-thousand; course, two-twelve," the flight engineer said.
"All right. She's on automatic," the skipper, Major Ed Morrisey,
said. Through his green sun visor his eyes, keen and pale, flashed whitely as
he scribbled on his knee pad. Behind the great jet bomber the contrails spread,
miles long, glistening in the sun that was already invisible to the
infinitesimal mortals far below on the snow-splotched ground. The skipper
stretched his arms and yawned briefly.
"Radar,"
he murmured in his throat mike. "What's the tale, tall and pale?"
"Negative."
"Mort?"
"Fuel, twenty hours. Power,
sixty-five," the flight engineer, Morton Anderson, first lieutenant,
snapped off the power and fuel ratings, his helmeted head an orange ball in the
dimly reflected setting sun.
The skipper nodded. "DeNapoli,"
he said into the intercom, "what's with you, old man? Going to keep quiet
all the way? No songs? No lies?"
"So I'm older than God," DeNapoli's voice came from far back in the tail of the huge
bomber, "but a liar I am not. I was just thinking—"
"Now who's lying!" The others barked and hooted.
"Do
you know once three women—three of
God's fairest—fought the good fight for me?" DeNapoli
said when the uproar subsided. "This was in Weinheim
in '45."
"Nineteenth
or twentieth century?"
"Yeah, be explicit,
Nap."
"There
was this big hall we had," DeNapoli said, his
voice a quiet sound in the intercom. "Kraut POWs for
orchestra. Round tables, shiny floor. Nothing but the smoothest of grogs. All captured
stuff."
"Including the
women?"
"Including the
women," DeNapoli said.
"Say,"
Levitt, the waist gunner broke in, "they got this crazy hi-fi in the new
cars—why don't they put one in here? We could have nothing but a ball all the
way there and back."
"Shut
the hell up," DeNapoli said evenly. "In
them days I had all my hair and marbles—"
The intercom buzzed with hoots and rasping sounds as the ten crewmen razzed DeNapoli.
"Hello,
Snapdragon." The
voice, harsh and alien from far below, ripped at the men inside the plane.
"This is Evergreen One. Stand by for weather check."
"Roger, Evergreen One.
Go ahead."
The
navigator bent over his board, checking with the radar advance-warning post
already miles behind and below, lost in the dark curtain of forest and cold.
"Angels, five
o'clock," radar said softly.
From
far below, needle-nosed snouts pointing toward the sleek bomber, six
tiny-winged, barrel-bodied F106A's swam up through the blue-black arctic air.
Within minutes they moved silently alongside, easily matching the bomber's
speed. They remained stacked above and below, the hottest planes and pilots the
nation had.
"Pretty, pretty,"
DeNapoli murmured.
"Hello,
Snapdragon." The
flight leader of the fighter group came in. "This is Blackbird One. Do you
read?"
"Hello, Blackbird
One," skipper said. "I read you well."
"Ah, roger, Snapdragon. We escort you over the straits. In the.event of an attack we will use plan Katherine. I say
again, Katherine."
"Understand,
Blackbird One," skipper said, his voice somehow amused. He winked at
copilot.
"How's
everything in God's country?" The flight leader's voice whispered eerily
in their phones, a tinny, melancholy sound.
"Yeah,"
another voice cut in, one of the other fighters. "Give us a reading—that
is if you guys managed to get out of your rocking chairs."
"The
Mark Hopkins now gives double whisky sours to all fly-boys with certified tiger
blood," skipper said.
"Stay
away from the Dollhouse on Turk Street," copilot put in. "Loaded
blondes—and they actually gave me my medium-rare well-done. Dreadful!"
A
chorus of groans from the fighters; men stranded in the cruel arctic, the thin
first line of defense. Men whose planes measured their fuel
in minutes of flying time. They hung above and below the huge bomber,
knowing that only hours before that long fuselage had
reflected the hot California sunshine, squatting on the miles-long runway at
Hamilton Field, sixty minutes from San Francisco and the Golden Gate. Land of
soft fogs, neon-lit hills, good food, tall buildings and tall women.
The
sky darkened to deep purple. "Returning to base," the flight leader
said. One by one they peeled off and slid away into the gathering dark, leaving
the bomber once again alone, slipping through the deepening sub-zero night.
Throughout the plane the men remained at their posts, swaddled in layers of
functional clothing, attached by wires and tubes to their plane, drawing their
heat from her, sucking their life-giving air through masks; together, yet each
alone, miles above the alien frozen sea. The bomber moved inexorably forward.
"Bogies," radar said quietly.
"Seven o'clock."
From
behind came the swift clatter as DeNapoli and the
others cleared their guns with brief bursts.
"All
power," skipper said. "We'll go up. Let them make their move—see what
they've got."
The
big plane tilted steeply, reaching for yet more altitude. Higher and higher
but still below its maximum operating level, a fantastically high altitude:
Below, far below, black shadows silhouetted against the snowy sea, the tiny MIG
fighters kicked in afterburners, tilted and scrambled for altitude, thin
contrails streaming out.
"Second
stringers," the skipper murmured. Long minutes passed, but still the
fighters remained tiny dots, unable to come within miles of their altitude.
"Have fun, kids,"
DeNapoli said.
I N V A S I ON .97
"Nine
hours from target," navigator said. "Two hours from enemy
territory."
"Fuel, sixteen hours. Power,
eighty-five," engineer said.
"They're
still tagging," radar said. "Another group at five
o'clock below."
"What's on the hom?"
Levitt asked plaintively.
The
radio man turned a dial and suddenly soft music flooded the plane. Dave
Brubeck's piano, cool and infinitely remote. Abruptly it cut off, and a
hasty-voiced announcer came in.
"Further word on the invasion of West Germany. At Geneva the American ambassador has just
handed an ultimatum to the invaders. They are ordered immediately to start
withdrawal of all troops within two hours. That is twelve o'clock midnight,
Pacific Standard Time. If the troops have not started withdrawing by that time,
the ambassador states, swift and terrible retaliatory action against the
heartland of the invaders will be taken by the United States. Of what nature,
he did not disclose. However—"
Radio flipped the dial. More excited chatter on short-wave station after
station.
"Nothing but
talk," radio said.
The
big bomber climbed. Below and to the left the wing of MIG fighters matched her
speed, following, making no moves. As one group peeled off and drifted away,
another came from ahead to take its place, pacing the swift bomber.
"They'll
put in the varsity the second we're inside their territory," the skipper
said. He glanced at his watch. "Forty-five minutes ETA."
Beneath
a brilliant moon the plane raced along incredibly fast, a gleaming arrow
pointed straight at the heart of the ice-locked nation. The navigator climbed
down from the solar bay after shooting for position. He bent over his plot
board.
"We're into their territory," he
said.
"So now they can stop guessing,"
skipper said.
"Bogies at seven o'clock," radar
said. "Nine o'clock."
"Pilot
to crew," skipper said sharply, "check your
MC-3's. We're going on top." One by one he called off the men, each in
turn murmuring a quiet "Roger" as he checked his MC-3 decompression
suit and equipment. At their maximum operating level, a rupture of the plane's
fuselage could cause explosive decompression, immediate death to any man
unprepared.
"Tallyho! One o'clock ahead!"
The bomber rocked in violent evasive action.
A volley of high-velocity rockets swooshed below, and an odd-winged, stubby
fighter shot past beneath, vanishing immediately astern.
"It's
their hot one," copilot said. "Handling a little
mushy. Do you think it's in our league?"
Skipper
glanced calmly at him, and his eyebrows waggled above his oxygen mask.
"We'll throw them a curve and see," he said. "All
power."
The
bomber climbed. The intercom came alive as the gunners shouted excited
warnings.
"Tallyho! Six o'clock. Levitt! Levitt!"
The
bitter, acrid smell of cordite drifted through the long bomb-bay tunnel. There
was a clatter, clatter, a brilliant flare as a high-velocity rocket
zoomed past, missing, then another brighter flare and a bellow from the waist
gunner.
"Got him! Got him!"
"How lucky can you
get?" from DeNapoli. "Bogies, six o'clock
below."
"Power, ninety-five," engineer
said. The bomber climbed. Below, one by one, the odd-looking jets pointed
blunt, open-nosed snouts at them, poised delicately on stubby wings, clawing
ineffectually at the rarified air, firing off rockets which curved in swift
spitting arcs, falling short, to disappear into the darkness.
"Aw,
come on, fellows," Levitt muttered. There was a sudden hard silence as the fighters dropped away and vanished.
"That's
right, go home and tell poppa," skipper said. He called to the flight
engineer, now back near the tail, crouched in a miniature armored vault.
"You got the monster warmed up, kid?"
"We're in business, skipper."
Within
seconds and miles away, a sudden eye-hurting light dimmed the moon and threw
harsh shadows on the land below. The skipper made a motion as though wiping
sweat from his brow. Copilot nodded, waggling eyebrows happily.
"Surprise, surprise," DeNapoli said.
Even
as he spoke another burst of brilliant light and explosion, soundless to the
bomber hurtling along faster than the waves of sound, lighted the ground below
into a weird moonscape. The monster was doing its super-secret radar-jamming
work well. Guided missiles began bursting prematurely about them with
monotonous regularity.
"Twenty-four
fifty," navigator said. "Bogies, four o'clock, seven o'clock,
below," radar said.
The bogies swept up, huge even at that great
distance. They were four jet bombers, dead-black, like destroying angels.
Skipper glanced over to the copilot.
"Here comes the Sunday
punch."
"Things are tough all
over," copilot murmured.
The
sinister black bombers in tight formation headed up. The great silver bomber
tilted its sharp nose and climbed. There was a long thin line of fire from the
lead bomber far below, a brilliant arc of flame and then the plane-to-plane
guided missile exploded prematurely and behind the silver bomber. Again the monster
had done its job. From all the black bombers below the long; sizzling trails
shot up toward them to end abruptly, far short, in dazzling explosions,
soundless, throwing the bogey bombers into brilliant relief.
"So now they
know," the skipper said softly.
"Back to the minors
for your guys," DeNapoli said.
The
bomber swept on, unbelievably high and fast, gleaming nose pointed unswervingly
for the hearüand of the country.
"Hello,
Snapdragon, Hello, Snapdragon. Big Bear One calling Snapdragon."
The
skipper and copilot exchanged swift glances. "Go ahead, Big Bear
One," skipper said. "This is Snapdragon."
"Snapdragon/'
the voice was clear but
faint, "stand by to take a message. Do you read me well? Over."
"Hello, Big Bear One.
Read you well and clear. Over."
"Snapdragon: Bittersweet. Bittersweet.
Acknowledge."
"Hello,
Big Bear One. This is Snapdragon, acknowledging Bittersweet. Over and out."
The
great silver bomber heeled over, swept around in an enormous arc and headed
back in the direction it had come, the contrails flaring out behind the eight
jet engines like the wake of a mighty fleet in a smooth sea. Spread out below,
the bogey bombers paced it all the way to the border.
"O-one-hundred,"
navigator said.
"What's
on the horn?" Levitt demanded. "We ought to get Armed Forces out of
Elmendorf. Real crazy stuff, dad."
A crackle of static sounded on the intercom
as radio switched to an international channel. An excited civilian voice came
in strongly. "... capitulated in a highly dramatic personal plea from the
premier himself, begging the U.S. Air Force to call back their bombers and
agreeing immediately to withdraw all invading troops from—"
There
was a crash of static as radio flipped the dial. " .
. . totally unable to check the bombers reported to have been converging on the
invader's homeland from all points of the globe. Apparently the premier waited
until the last possible moment before accepting the ultimatum delivered
earlier by the U.S. ambassador—"
Another
crash of static as radio twirled the dial. "...
steady stream of troops and equipment pulling
out of West Germany. To repeat the bulletin of thirty minutes ago: The invasion
of West Germany has ended. In a highly dramatic personal plea to the U.S. ambassador
at Geneva, the premier of—"
More static, more excited
voices. Silence.
"No
music anywhere," radio said. "Nothing but yakitty-yak."
"Eight million bucks Uncle pays for this
wagon and not even a lousy little hi-fi," Levitt complained.
"Angels, six o'clock ahead," radar
said.
"Fuel,
thirteen hours; power, sixty-five," engineer said. "The monster
sealed and secured."
"Listen,
DeNapoli," the skipper said, "what about
these three women that were fighting over you? Wha' hoppen?"
"Yeah,
old man, make with the myths." "A long story, men," DeNapoli said. "So we're tigers for punishment."
"Okay, okay," DeNapoli said lazily.
"There were three dames, see? A blonde, a blonde and a blonde-
Report to the People
I'm
not a hero.
I'm getting a little fed up with all the panegyrics and savior-of-the-race
chatter that I've met here and at home. Actually, I did what any one of us
would have done in similar circumstances. The fact that I'd been prepared in
advance made it all the simpler. So, for the sake of a little peace, I'm
telling the whole story for once and for all.
It
all started when I stepped out of my office building onto Market Street. The
brisk San Francisco wind was blowing as usual, and I was braced hard against it
when a big hand grabbed my shoulder.
"Jerry!"
some character muttered in my ear. "It is Jerry Shipley?" He stared hard at me, a big, red-haired guy with
fine wrinkles about penetrating eyes. I remembered him instantly.
"Don Masterson. Hey,
fellow, how goes it?"
He
stared hard at me—especially my ears, although why he should stare at them I
didn't understand. Then he shot a quick glance at the impassive-faced mob
milling by on both sides.
"Listen,
Jerry," he said huskily, "you're just the boy I need. Still in publicity?"
"Sure," I said, looking curiously
at his face. He had a distinctly haunted, or maybe hunted, look. He shot
another glance around him.
"Can't talk to you now," he
murmured. "I don't want them to
know about you. Not yet."
"Who?" I swung around and stared up Market. A lot of people brushed by, coming and going. But just people as far as I was concerned. "What's the
deal, Don? Trouble?"
He smiled, a bitter
flash of white in his lean face. "I'm in it—up to my ears." He smiled
again and looked closely at me. I began to feel a trifle uneasy. The man seemed
hepped on the subject of ears. "I need your help,
Jerry," he said swiftly. "But not here. Where you located?"
I gave him my office address, he nodded and
took off without a good-by. I watched him stride away,
and I felt certain he wasn't entirely sane. In view of what I learned later, he
was more sane than any man ought to be. . . .
I
thought back to our college days when I'd first known Don Masterson. He was
some sort of science major, a really brainy person. Odd, when
I thought of it, that I hadn't seen him mentioned in some governmental capacity
what with all the projects and goings on. But then he'd always been a
solitary type as I recalled. Independent.
He
called a couple of days later, made an appointment, then
hung up. I'm no big-time operator, but I do keep busy, so I had to postpone
dinner and see Don Master-son after quitting time. It was dark, and the foghorns
on the bay were booming when Don finally slipped in, looking haunted, or
hunted, and clutching a large manila folder. He got right down to business.
"In
the first place, Jerry," he began, "I want you to know I can pay—and
pay all you want—for publicity." He brought out a wallet and laid some
bills on the desk. Thousand dollar bills. "But I
want real publicity. The biggest magazines. TV. Radio. Make them laugh, if they
must. Call it crackpot. But let them know!"
He
put the wallet away, leaving a lot of the bills on the desk. "Eventually,
somewhere, some one of us who counts is going to wonder and ask to see for
himself, just for ducks. He'll get the brush-off and he'll wonder some more.
He'll see people. Pull strings. And it'll snowball. It'll get too big for them
to suppress any longer and then —then we'll have them on the run."
He
opened the manila folder and spread out some ten-by-ten glistening, slick
photographs on the desk, covering the big-denomination bills. I looked at the
pictures. Buildings. People.
I looked closer.
"Undersea pictures?" Most of the persons in the pix were in what
appeared to be diving suits. The buildings, on closer examination, looked a
little like the delicate fairy-castles and odd structures one sees in fishbowls
or garden fishponds. Unreal and able to remain upright only
in the lesser gravity of underwater.
He
got up, shot the bolt on the door, peeked into the secretary's room, then came back. I watched him narrowly. His face was stern,
his eyes hard, but he seemed sane enough. Only his actions were theatrical, you
might say. People act that way in B dramas.
"I'll
start at the beginning," he said, slumping down in a soft leather chair. I
looked again at the pictures. One of them was of several submarines lying side
by side, while over them spiraled the impossibly
fragile spires of a lacelike structure. The subs appeared to be resting on a
sandy bottom. Beyond them were a scattering of myriad pinpoints like a
sequin-sewn curtain.
"I
sold patent rights to several new glass-annealing and lens-grinding
processes," Masterson said quietly, his voice loud in the after-dark
silence of the building. The wind shook the window, and from beyond the foghorn
cried its bass warning. "I won't get technical, but I will say it's
revolutionary—and it sold for a lot." He smiled bitterly again. "Only
the patent holders aren't using the processes, even though it makes obsolete
the finest electron microscopes and the largest Schmidt—or even the
two-hundred incher on Palomar."
"What's this Schmidt?"
I asked.
"An astronomical camera—and a very good one considering the
limitations of the lens. The best in the world next to mine."
"Let
me get this straight," I put in. "You invented some way of making
glass for the lenses of microscopes or cameras?"
"Anything
that requires the focusing of light," he said. "Coupled with my new
grinding methods, the results are unbelievable." He sagged in the chair,
and suddenly his face was weary. "I made several excellent reflectors and
telescopes before I applied for the patents." He smiled wryly. "It's
a good thing I did. At least I got a few good shots before they moved in."
"They?" I looked at him curiously. He sat up, his keen eyes holding mine.
"Look,
what I'm about to tell you will seem insane, of course.
But you'll have to believe me. You'll have to remember my background, my
reputation in school. And I'll say this—I'm not insane, and these photographs
are real"
He
pointed a long finger at the array of pix on my desk. "Those first three
shots were taken with my fourteen-inch camera. Mars.
The others are later shots, taken with the twenty-four incher. Remarkably good close-ups considering atmospheric problems at the
time. Brings the surface of the planet to within a
quarter of a mile."
"Did
you say Mars?" I said. I felt the first crawling in my stomach as I
searched his face intently. He seemed sane, but Mars.
"Imagine what abysses of space I could
penetrate with even so small a lens as forty inches," he said somberly.
"But they're afraid of us. They hold my patents, and they're too
entrenched for us. Too clever."
I
stared at the pictures again. Not submarines but spaceships, Masterson was
saying. Not undersea fairy castles supported by the dense water but
needle-pointed towers of Martian civilization, with no heavy gravity to tumble
them to the red ground.
"Look, Don," I finally said.
"This is terribly interesting, but what about the two-hundred incher on
Palomar? Wouldn't that have shown some evidence of all this? How come nobody
knows of this?"
He
nodded impatiently. "Remember those pictures released last year in that
picture magazine, showing the moon from a distance of two hundred miles—blurry,
with jagged shadows and deep black pits?" His lips twisted in disgust. "Faked. Every damn bit of it. The
two-hundred incher on Palomar, bad as it is, is good enough to pick up
anything on the moon over nine feet high!" He slipped another picture out
of the envelope and tossed it to me.
The
first thing I noted were the contrasts. Blinding white and inky shadows. Anything in the shadows was
cut off, so that I had a little trouble at first making out just what the
picture depicted. Gradually things came into focus. And I mean things. Great
spidery ramps, like infinitely high shoot-the-chutes at the beach. More of the
submarine-looking objects, poised at the top of one of the great swooping
ramps. Buildings, burnished and gleaming like miniature suns, were scattered
all over in the background. And beings, plainly discernible, were swarming
over the spaceship. Beings which looked remarkably human.
"The fourteen-inch camera," Don
said, his cool voice penetrating my brain like a dash of ice water, and only
then did I realize how tense I'd become. His long finger reached past me and
pointed at one of the human-like figures in the foreground.
"Want
to see a Martian?" He slid another photograph from his manila folder and
handed it to me. "Same setting, same figure, only with the twenty-four,
and not a full magnification either. After all, it's
only on the moon."
I
looked at the pale, aesthetic-looking face that stared at me, photographed, so
Don claimed, from across hundreds of thousands of miles of black, cold space.
The eyes were quite human; the features fairly regular; the nose a little more
snubbed than ordinary. No hair .at all—and no ears.
"Very
little air to carry sound on Mars," Don's voice echoed in my ears. "I
imagine their ears atrophied in time. They're a very ancient race."
I
stared at the creature from another world. It didn't look at all like a
bug-eyed monster. Rather mild and definitely intellectual looking.
"An
interplanetary refueling station," Masterson said calmly, and the
strangeness of his conversation in my prosaic office, wtih
the foghorn booming outside, washed over me in a prickling chill. The pictures
couldn't have been faked. They were too—too natural. I can't explain it. In my
business I handle hundreds of pix. I can spot a phony from here to there. These
weren't phonies.
"I went to Palomar," Don was
saying. "I didn't bring along any of"—he waved at the
photos—"those. I was curious. I wanted to know why, with the almost
unlimited reflecting power of the two-hundred incher,
none of the structures on the moon, at least, had been seen and reported."
Again
he grinned, that same wry grin. He ran a hand through hair like tangled copper
wire. "I saw Professor Elliot. A big wheel. I
showed him my academic qualifications and asked for permission to use the
smaller telescope. He told me I'd have to wait several years,
that other and more important persons and institutions were ahead of
me." He rose and stood looking down at me, his hands jammed deep in his
pockets.
"I
knew that before I went up there, but I got what I wanted: a close look at the
people in charge of the telescopes, the reflectors, the
observatory as a whole. The people responsible for the big eye of the world,
our only window, outside the ones I'd made, that can show to the world that
there actually is civilization, thriving and brilliant beyond our wildest
dreams, on the other planets."
He
took a deep breath. "They were Martians. Every damn one
of them." He waited, his head cocked to one side, looking at me.
But the night had held too many shocks. I merely sat, numbly, and nodded.
"It
figures," I said feebly. He obviously expected something a little
stronger, and for the first time he grinned, a relaxed, frank smile of
approval.
"You're
ahead of me, Jerry," he said. "But it's the only answer. It had to
be. They're centuries ahead of us. They've had time to infiltrate, to get into
every center of learning, of industry. Every place where they
can take over and misdirect or stifle any advance. Copernicus,
Newton,
Galileo. Look at the difficulty our rocket programs are experiencing. And
why?"
"Their
ears," I said, interrupting his train of thought. "They don't have
any ears."
"That's
how I knew," he said absently, staring down at the close-up. "Plastic surgery. But their ears show a definite ridge,
or line, where they join the head. If you're looking for it, you can spot it a
mile away." He swung toward me. "And their bodies, they're
fight." His eyes smoldered like twin welding arcs.
"Don't
you see why they fear us? They move with difficulty here. Only their strongest and
most powerful men and women can even survive on the triple gravity of
earth." He knotted his hands into big fists. "On Mars we'd be
supermen! Imagine a person on earth able to take sixty-foot leaps at a bound. To uproot a mighty oak. Tear down a building with one shove.
And warlike. Filled with boundless
energy, a lust for power. Eager, yearn-mg.
His
voice dropped to a whisper. "Picture such a person, and you'll know why
they fear us—those brilliant but pitifully weak Martians. Once we learn there
is civilization on the planets; once we learn to fling ourselves into the
voids of space and journey to their planet, it'll be the old, old story of
mankind repeated. They'll go the way of the buffalo and Indian, too weak to
survive in a battle that goes to the young and the terribly strong. To us."
I
swallowed and got a grip on my senses. "We could set up your telescopes
and reflectors and have a sort of planetarium like they have in Golden Gate
Park," I began. "Free—"
"Do
you think they'd miss getting at those?" he interrupted irritably.
"They must have suspected when one of them obtained the rights to my patents. Every part I ordered must have been
noted and a record of my progress kept. I scattered the orders as much as
possible." Once again that bitter smile twisted his strong face. "But
they're everywhere. Switzerland. Italy. Even South
Africa." He slumped in the chair again. "I didn't have the
fourteen and twenty-four inchers assembled for more than a week before they
came. I was out of town. I should have guessed." His voice became a harsh,
pain-filled whisper. "Smashed. Broken.
Years of work—gone."
"You
mean they destroyed all this, these cameras that took these?" I motioned
to the photographs. He nodded, wordlessly. "But you can rebuild can't
you?" I said. "It's a big country, Don. You've got money. Get guards.
Set up a—"
A
wave of his hand cut me off. "I ordered an electric furnace," he said
dully. "A simple electric furnace. It never came.
I went personally to the plant, right here in San Francisco." He shrugged.
"Priorities, they said. I tried to rent a building in Los Angeles with
adequate power inlets. Not for rent—to me." He spread his hands. "Do
you think I haven't tried? They're everywhere. Chairman of
the board of this, chief consulting engineer of that. Nothing—I repeat,
Jerry, literally nothing in this world that requires technical devices and
services can be assembled once they're aware of it unless they permit
it."
I
stared at his dejected figure, while outside the fog closed in and the
long-short, long-short of the foghorns boomed. "If all this is true,
aren't you afraid for your life?" I said. "I mean, you know so much. And these pictures."
He
smiled ironically. "Why kill me? What can I do now? Without machinery and
tools I couldn't cast another lens, let alone grind and assemble the
reflectors. And besides," he sat up and his eyes were boring into mine.
"Besides, they don't know yet about these photographs." He leaned
toward me. "They think it's just my word against theirs. But these photos
are something else. They'll arouse interest, talk, speculation,
if nothing else. That's why I'm here. These are mankind's ace in the hole, and
I'm banking on you, Jerry," he added softly.
I
pushed the thousand dollar bills about with one finger. Twenty
of them. Then I looked again at the pictures. Clear,
wonderfully detailed prints.
"Can you leave these with me?" I
said. He nodded.
"I took the negatives off the plates
before smashing them." He patted his jacket near the heart. "They're
as safe here as anyplace," he said dryly. "What do you plan?"
"Right now, dinner," I said,
"Let's—" He shook his
head.
"I've got to run," he said. He
stood up and towered over me. "Do you believe any of it? Do you believe
me?"
I leaned back and studied him. "It's a
screwy story, Don. These pictures are wonderful, of course. And I don't see how
they could be faked—but the whole world under the domination of
super-scientists? Everything controlled by them?" I shook my head.
"It's so—"
"Corny?" he finished for me
bleakly.
"Look, Don," I said, "if you
want to buy my services, okay. I'll promise to do the best I can for you. I
mean, sure, I'll get you publicity. All you want. I'll even get you a spread in
a national weekly, pix and all, with this kind of dough."
"One thing." His voice was chilly. "Regardless
of whether you believe me or not. Before you give those pictures to
anyone, make certain you remember what I told you. Be sure he's . . .
human."
"I
don't know what your game really is, Don." I gave him a wink. "A movie coming up? No? Anyway, I'll guarantee this:
one look at these"—I waved the thousand dollar bills—"and everyone I
know, but everyone, is all too human."
I
held out my hand and he crushed it in a paw like a vise. He hesitated,
shrugged, then walked out, a tall, somehow noble
figure. The moment the door closed I ripped the pictures into tiny shreds,
piled them in a large bronze ash tray and set them afire. They were curling
into black ashes when the door opened silently, and he bounded
back in, his face white, his eyes blazing terribly.
He
reached across the desk and lifted me with one mighty arm clear above the chair
top.
"Too
late," I gasped. Even though his grip was slowly killing me, I couldn't
keep the triumph out of my voice.
"You!" Slowly,
slowly, he let me down and his shoulders sagged. "I'd never have
known," he said, staring at my ears with hypnotic fascination. "Except for your handshake."
"A
new technique," I said, feeling the fluid coming back into my shoulder,
easing the terrible pain where his fingers had nearly met about the bone. I
watched him closely. His eyes flickered.
"So now you
know," he said slowly.
"We
never dreamed," I murmured, "that you had perfected your lens to
obtain such results." I gestured to the heap of ashes. "But it
doesn't matter anymore."
"I'll
have to kill you," he whispered. His eyes flickered again. And again. His head rolled.
"You could have but no
longer. Your handshake—this
ring I wear." I showed him the
tiny needle apparatus, although,
even as I did so,
it was
too late
for him.
He slumped heavily to the floor
and lay
still. A most
dangerous man. I was
glad that at last we
had the
final proof that his particular menace was ended. I
removed the negatives from his pocket
and rang
for assistance.
I couldn't
possibly have moved him myself.
Not in this awful gravity.
Deadly Decision
It was just a small control
panel on the concrete wall
of an underground room. On the panel was a toggle switch labeled safety
and ready. The switch was on "Safety." Next
to the switch was a large black push button.
Captain
Jim Henderson sat in the low concrete room and stared at the button on the
control panel, a plain black button. ("We've tried to cover every
conceivable contingency, Jim," the colonel had said, "but we're not
infallible. Should the unforeseen arise—be sure, Jim. Be very sure.")
He stared at the button, his mouth dry, the
palms of his hands wet in spite of the ever present chill in the subterranean
room buried deep beneath the arctic icecap. He rubbed his bearded chin and
looked again at the electric clock on the wall. Nine fifteen. He glanced at his
own wristwatch. Nine fifteen and ten seconds of a dark, cold arctic day, A day
without sun, less than a hundred miles from the North Pole, A day in which the
only light outside was the majestic incandescent display of the aurora
borealis swelling and flaring across the sky, pulsating, the brilliant, icy
heartbeat of the arctic
He
got up jerkily, his knees stiff from the long vigil next to the "condition
yellow" emergency short-wave set. It crackled loudly, and he leaped to the
volume conns
trol, spinning it all the way over. The noise
roared at him, senseless, chaotic. He winced and spun the dial, searching out
known channels, and from all of them came the tremendous roaring crackling
bursts of sheer gibberish. He cut down the volume and glanced again at the
button on the wall opposite; the perspiration gleamed on his face.
He
left the submerged block house, locking the thick Monel
metal door behind him, the door to which only he had the key. He walked slowly
through the frost-covered tube that connected these underground warrens sunk
far below the ancient ice of the polar cap. This was Advance Kickoff, the
Army's supersecret guided-missile base. Advance
Kickoff was here for one purpose and one purpose alone: the big punch. Behind
that control panel in the concrete room was a deep ceramic-lined pit. And in
that
pit-
Jim tried not to think of that pit and what
it contained. He glanced at his watch again automatically. Nine twenty-five.
Twenty-five minutes past the time when the inevitable check signal should have
come from the master-control base. The signal that came every
three hours without fail, night and day. The signal that told Captain
Jim Henderson, commander, Advance Kickoff, that everything was as usual in the
United States of America, Canada and Mexico. A signal that must come without
fail—and should it fail to come, he had his orders.
He
walked along one of the connecting tunnels deep beneath the ice and stepped
through the door into the main bunker. All the men were there, all thirty of
them; bearded, gaunt, each a fine, intelligent soldier trained to do a
demanding job, psychologically picked for this nerve-racking, supersecret assignment just below the North Pole. Good men,
but now they stared with oddly distorted faces, and only the crackling hum of
the powerful radio filled the room with sound.
"No signal yet," Honicker, warrant. officer and chief
radio tech, murmured to Jim.
"It's
over three hours, sir," Sergeant Ivers, the ICBM
technician, said, face strained, beard quivering as
his lips trembled. "Do we kick it off?"
The question to end all questions. The question that only Captain Jim Henderson
could answer—and act upon.
He
was here because of the new army, the army of white-jacketed, brilliant men, of
graphs, of exhaustive analyses, of cunning computing machines that filled whole
buildings and dealt only in probabilities, integrating, sorting, sifting ream
upon ream of information to finally come up with answers that were accurate to
the hundredth decimal place.
Before
the Army had given Captain Jim Henderson this lonely, terrible responsibility,
they'd subjected him to a battery of tests. They'd reviewed every inch of his
background, his personality, all his little
idiosyncrasies. They'd asked questions, innumerable, apparently unconnected
questions, and finally all these findings had been carefully correlated into a
series of blank punch cards. The cards, hundreds of them, had fed into the maw
of a computing machine that whirred, blinked multicolored lights and in brief
seconds had disgorged a long tape, punched in series of rows like a
player-piano roll.
In
a matter of seconds the great impersonal machine had digested his life and come
up with an answer, an answer an equally impersonal technician had deciphered
and passed along to the Pentagon: Captain Jim Henderson was suitable in every
detail for the job.
But the machine had been wrong, Jim knew,
staring at the thirty tense, bearded faces, Ustening
to the garbled static coming from the radio. Now the moment of decision was already
past, and he was afraid. Afraid of the consequences of that act of pushing the
button in the missile control room.
"Do
we kick it off?" Within that pit behind the control panel was poised the
sum total of the finest minds in the western world. A tall, gleaming rocket,
ninety feet high, fueled with a revolutionary nonliquid
pfopellant, sleekly powerful, capable of thrusting
its many-tonned lithium-cobalt warhead hundreds of
miles into the sky, then tilting and streaking at better than fifteen thousand
miles an hour to pinpoint over a certain section of the great nation that lay
on the other side of the globe. It bore within it antimissile missiles,
radar-scattering deflection devices, every cunning
artifice known to enable it to penetrate the tightest warning network on
earth.
It
was the Big Punch. A doomsday weapon made of lithium-cobalt, carrying fifty
megatons of controlled hell, hotter than the interior of the sun, more deadly
than all the A-bombs in the world. The Big Punch, electronically controlled to
explode high over a section where jet winds would carry the instantaneous death
of radioactive cobalt dust to an entire nation, drifting down over hundreds of
thousands of square miles of earth, blighting it, killing everything
living—humans, livestock, plants, transmuting genes, changing forever whatever
lay in its path, leaving it a radiating death trap for centuries, a ravaged
no-man's land where none could enter and survive.
This
was the Big Punch. The hell bomb. This was the
responsibility that was his. He'd never dreamed in his wildest nightmares that they would be insane enough to start it, to bring this ultimate doom to their
nation.
But something terrible must have happened.
The signal hadn't come. He'd signaled "condition yellow" and no response,
an eventuality for which he had his orders.
"No,"
he said coldly to Ivers, "we don't kick it off.
Not until I know"
He looked at Warrant Officer Honicker. Honicker stared back,
and behind his eyes something crawled. He'd seen that look before in men's
eyes, and he knew it was the prelude to violence. These were all good men, but
he'd seen good men crack under conditions of less strain. Advance Kickoff
might as well be on the moon if trouble struck at main base. They were isolated
without radio, even their snow buggies useless without radio directional
signals. Without radio they were alone up here in the arctic dark, alone with
the end of the world poised in a pit, waiting for the press of a button.
"There
hasn't been a signal that makes sense since the last security check at 0600
from base," Honicker said, his voice a dry
croak. "Thule, Fistclench, Sierra, Skyline —I've
tried them all. They're dead. None of them read me." His eyes gleamed in
near panic. "What more do you want, captain—an invitation in
writing?"
"Haven't
you picked up anything from the States?" Jim asked, ignoring the
hysterical sarcasm. "What about that ham in Philly you're always spieling
with?"
"Negative,"
Sergeant Ivers interrupted hoarsely. "There's
nothing from anywhere in the world. No planes, no hams —nothing but static,
static—" His strong fingers bit
into Jim's shoulder. "I tell you, Captain, they've hit us first— and we're
standing around doing nothing. You've got to kick it off."
"No."
Jim stared at Ivers, forcing himself to be cold and
nerveless, forcing the trembling out of his legs. ("We're not and never
will be aggressors," the general had said with firm conviction. "It's
in the very nature of our kind of government that we'll have to be hit first,
and then— and only then—do we hit back. And that's where you come in,
Captain.")
"Keep trying," he said implacably.
"VHP, UHF—try them all." He spun and left the room, throwing on his
heavy parka. Behind he heard the men shuffling, murmuring, their
voices rumbling. His hand tightened on the key in his pocket.
He
went up the wooden stairs to the "penthouse," the main entrance to
the underground units, flung his hood over his head and wrestled the door open
against the eternal wind. It was cold, cold as only the arctic can be cold.
Forty-eight below zero the thermometer read. He glanced up at the sky and was
stunned at the unbelievable magnificence of the aurora borealis. The lights
flared all across the sky like a gleaming, sparkling curtain. He'd never before
seen it in such spectacular magnitude.
He
looked south, straining his ears for any sound, hoping to hear the distant
thunder of jets or the dry barking of diesels—anything. He couldn't believe,
wouldn't believe, that the base had been attacked, that the United States lay
smoking under mushroom clouds.
But
his orders were explicit. Every contingency had been foreseen, even to sabotage
smashing every radio at base control—"condition yellow." There was a
special power-packed short-wave radio in the missile fire-control room,
controlled directly from underground centers in the Colorado Rockies. He'd used
that radio when the signal from base was overdue. They should have responded
instantly, but they hadn't. Only the static had leaped out at him, and he'd
known then that the final contingency had arisen: the deadly decision was his
and his alone to make.
He
walked over the hump that was the roof of the missile launching pit. A flick of
the toggle switch from safety to ready and that roof would open smoothly, easily,
exposing the immense nose of the missile. A touch of the black button and it
would leap out into the arctic night, spitting fire and fury, up, up into the
absolute cold of outer space before tilting and assuming its path of death for
hundreds of millions. Such an easy act, pushing a button.
But the consequences were irrevocable. It meant, he knew, the doom of the
planet. Who could say with certainty that the cobalt cloud wouldn't circle the
entire globe?
He
looked up at the flaming lights, and his lips moved as he prayed for guidance.
It was inconceivable, he told himself again, that they
would have launched World War Three, knowing we possessed the hell bomb, knowing
we had the means to deliver it. People, even they, just weren't that suicidal.
He
glanced at his watch. Nine forty-five. Forty-five minutes since the signal was
overdue. What had happened? Had they assembled their subs off every major city
and at a given signal launched their H-missiles? Had their saboteurs struck at
dams and power plants, radio stations, telephone exchanges simultaneously with
small A-bombs? It seemed incredible that at least the hams, those ubiquitous,
garrulous characters who never failed in a crisis, wouldn't have had a message
or two on the air.
He
walked over to their two snow buggies, huge-tired diesel tractors, listened to
the low mutter as the engines turned over. Those diesels were never turned off.
To do so meant they'd instantly freeze, and without
those buggies they'd be in a serious fix. He leaned into the cozy, warm cab
and flicked on the short-wave transmitter.
"Hello
Big Punch," he said hoarsely, "anything yet? Over."
He pressed the button and static, savage, ear-blasting, leaped out at him. He
hesitated, then called again. Again, when he pressed
the button, the noise blared out of the speaker, garbled, frightening in its
intensity.
The
penthouse door burst open, and a man leaped out, wearing only his thin barracks
clothes. His face was pale behind his beard, his eyes glaring.
"Captain! Captain!" He grabbed Jim's shoulders with
terrific strength, bellowing in his ear, pulling him into the penthouse.
"You've got to kick it off. They've hit the States!"
Jim
dove down the steps and made for the radio room, the sergeant who'd called him
tumbling down after him, babbling wildly about ". . . terrific explosions
over Phil-ly—"
Jim
burst into the radio room, and the thirty other men of Advance Kickoff were
huddled there, staring at him as he entered. Warrant Officer Honicker was bent over the main radio, listening intently,
fiddling with the dials. An enormous howling rose from the set, eerie,
frightening.
"Too much
interference," he muttered.
"Probably
from the bomb," another sergeant, a cook, said.
"Use
your head," another tech said. "No fusion bomb could disturb the
atmosphere like that." The rest of the men looked at one another, tense,
bearded faces glistening.
"The base?" Jim choked, unable for an instant to ask the question. "Did you
get the.... the word?"
Honicker looked up from the set, turned down the
volume, and there was a strange, wild look in his eyes.
"I got that ham out of Philly," he
said. "All I could hear were the words, 'An enormous fireball, big enough
for two worlds,' and then"—he swallowed and ran a tongue around dry lips—"nothing."
Jim stared at Honicker,
trying to comprehend the enormity df
what the ham had said, sick to his stomach as though he'd been kicked there.
"It's
not enough," he said. "The base. Did you
raise anything from the base?"
"What more do you want?" Ivers bellowed, tears streaming down into his handle-bar
mustache. "They've started it. Give them what they've been asking for!
Kick it off! Kick
it off!"
He
began screaming, weeping, and suddenly he brought around a terrific right,
bouncing his knuckles high off Jim's head. Jim went against the door, and the rest of the men surged forward. But they
didn't run for the missile room. Instead, several of them wresded
with Ivers, panting, falling over a Primus stove,
kicking over beds, stools, struggling to get the powerful sergeant under
control.
"He's gone ape—"
"Flipped
his wig—snow-happy."
They
had him under control finally. He crouched on a cot, weeping softly, and Honicker
came forward, eyes wild, lips drawn back from yellowed teeth.
"Do
we kick it off, or don't we?" he demanded. "I'm telling you I got the
ham plain and clear. He mentioned this big fireball, and—"
"No."
Henderson stood up, wiping away the blood that trickled down from his slashed
forehead. "There's something here I don't understand. All these radios
out—"
Honicker came closer, his eyes glittering. "I
tell you, I heard it."
So simple, his job. He had his orders. The signal hadn't come
through. The button. Walk into that concrete room into
which only he was authorized to go, to which only he had the key. Walk up to
that button. Press it.
"No."
The word was a hoarse whisper. "It's not enough." He saw Honicker's eyes go wild, his face pale under his heavy
beard. "Get back to that radio," he snapped.
"You're
yellow!" Honicker screamed. "Whose side are
you on^-theirs?"
Instinctively
Jim brought up a right, all his force behind it, knocking Honicker
against the cot on which Ivers lay. He bounced,
rolled over and lay still.
He
stood there, fighting the trembling, breathing hard. It was true, what Honicker said. He must be yellow. Now that the moment was
here, he couldn't do it. If his life depended upon it, he couldn't
walk into that room and flick the switch that would roll the roof back. Couldn't press that ominous black button that would send the
missile up on a tower of flame and thunder, carrying mankind's doom with it.
"Listen
to me, all of you," he said hoarsely. "I tried to raise you down here
from one of the buggies. Did it come through?"
One
of the techs shook his head. Jim nodded slowly. "I want a couple of squads topside right now. Something's happened, something
big. It's completely blanked out all radio." He pointed to one of the meteorologie
men. "Take a look at the aurora and see what I mean."
The
tech shook his head doubtfully, "The aurora might affect us, but the whole
world? Not a chance, sir."
"I
know that," Jim said impatiently. "I'm saying that whatever has
caused the aurora to act up has stopped all radio, and undoubtedly base knows
that, too. They'll have sent planes by now."
"But—"
The tech stared. "Without radio they'll play hell rinding
us in this dark. Our directional signal, radar, the works—none of it's being
received."
"Get
out there on the double," Jim ordered. "I want flares lit; start the
oil fires. I want light up there and plenty of it."
When
the silent men had bundled up and hustled out, he slapped Honicker
awake. "Get on that radio," he said. "If anything comes through,
I'll be in the control room. Use the intercom."
He
turned and left before Honicker could answer him. And
in the missile control room he was face to face with the firing button again.
He looked at his watch. Nearly two hours since the signal was overdue. Two
hours. All he loved, San Francisco, New York, the great and proud cities of
America might at this moment be a horrifying mass of radioactive flame and
rubble.
He
stared at the button in bitterness and self-loathing. ("Order No. 20: In
the event of failure of Central Control to respond to 'condition yellow,' the
commanding officer of Advance Kickoff shall, after correlating all known facts,
use his own discretion in firing.")
He
had correlated all known facts. No signals of any kind had been received for
nearly two hours. A ham had gotten out a garbled message which, according to a
semi-hysterical operator, had mentioned a giant globe of flame "big enough
for two worlds—"
He had his orders: Fire
upon his own discretion.
He couldn't.
The
responsibility was his, and now that the moment was here, he could think only
of the millions of souls on the other side of the globe, the target to which
the gleaming missile would roar in flame and sound, tilting over, blossoming
fiery white, spreading a cobalt cloud of death wider and wider on the jet
stream, a deadly retaliation that would only be a dying gesture hastening the
inevitable end for all.
Why
had they picked him for this job? The elaborate psychological
tests, the impersonal computing machines. What a joke! What a bitter
mockery. He looked at the button, knowing that he could no more press it now
than he could pick up a gun and blow his own brains
out. Either was suicide, only the button was world suicide.
He
was calm when he heard the roar of a low-flying transport plane overhead. The
intercom came to life and announced the colonel was entering the base. Jim was
prepared for anything but the look of absolute relief on the old man's
weathered face when he hurried through the heavy door and saw that the switch
was still on safety.
"Thank
the lord. Oh, thank the dear, sweet lord!" the old man said. He gave Jim a
keen scrutiny. "This has been the hairiest, absolutely the worst two hours
of my life, Jim. We thought we'd covered every contingency—but who'd have
foreseen an explosion to end all explosions on the sun!"
"The
. . . sun?"
"The goddamnedest, most unbelievable
flare-up of sun-spots ever known, Captain. Completely knocked out reception
on all lengths throughout the entire arctic circle."
Jim
sagged into his seat, the ominous button glittering, seeming to grow to
enormous dimensions. "A fireball shooting up from the sun's surface,"
he said softly, "leaving a hole big enough to swallow two worlds—"
"What's that?"
"Nothing." Jim smiled wryly. "Just
some ham's semi-scientific description of a sunspot."
"No
joking matter, Jim," the colonel said, "believe it." He frowned,
tugging at the thick door that led to the firing pit. "We sent a jet up
here the minute we realized we weren't getting through. That was a mistake. He floundered around up here without radio until his fuel was
nearly gone. Lucky to find his way back. I was in a bad way, my lad. I tell you no lies."
He folded his arms and inspected the missile,
his breath a misty
cloud in the cold chamber. The missile gleamed, a delicate rime of frost on its sides,
"Thank the lord,"
the colonel breathed.
"You were afraid I'd kicked it
off?" Jim asked.
The colonel glanced at him, then fumbled for a cigar.
"I—let's say I hoped you hadn't."
"You didn't have to worry about it,
sir," Jim said quietly. "When the chips were down, I chickened
out."
"I see," the colonel said.
They left the missile pit, the heavy
fireproof door slamming shut with a solid thud. The old man fit his cigar.
"Did you consider all the facts as
outlined in order twenty?"
"Yes,
sir."
"And
you arrived at the conclusion that the facts didn't warrant the firing?"
"No."
Jim looked at his hands, then glanced once at the
firing button. "I'd have fired, but I didn't have the guts."
"Put
it this way, Captain," the colonel said softly, "you'd have fired,
but you didn't have the heart"
Jim looked steadily at the
colonel. The old man was smiling flintily. "If we wanted a man who could
push a button, any damn fool would qualify," the colonel said. "Do
you think we ever really intend to use that monster in there?" He put a
hand on Jim's arm, and his face was deadly serious as he said, "What we
needed here, Captain, was a man who would fight himself every inch of the way
in the event the unforeseen arose. A man who would take all factors into
consideration, decide they warranted firing and still not press that button."
"But
that doesn't make sense, sir," Jim said. "Why have
the Big Punch in there and then put a man in control who won't use it?"
"Because, Jim," the colonel said,
"if we ever did use it, it would mean the end of
the world for all of us. No one wins the next one. We know that for a moral certainty."
"We know it, but do they?" Jim asked.
The colonel pointed to the thick door that
led to the firing pit. "So long as that hellish thing is in there, primed
and ready to go—and don't think for one minute they don't know we've got it primed and ready—then they'll snort and bluster
and raise fifteen different kinds of hell, but they'll never dare take that
final step."
Jim shook his head dubiously. "I wish I
could be as certain of that as you seem to be, sir."
"I'm a lot more certain of it now than I was two hours ago," the colonel said. "You see, the
computing machines assure us that so long as we have the Big Punch, they'll
never take that final step." He put a hand on Jim's shoulder. "The
same machines, Captain Henderson, that guaranteed your love of humanity was so
strong you'd never push that button."
The Man Who Knew
This is just a
dream. Neil Sheldon heard
the voice whispering in his head, assuring him it wasn't really happening. It
was just another of those incredibly realistic things that haunted his sleep
since the incident in Hürtgen
Forest a dozen years ago.
And again, like the other times, as he slipped along under the girders of the
partially constructed building, he could feel the
cold bite of the fog, hear
the slight clink as he
kicked a couple of rivets that were scattered about on the dark ground.
This is just a dream. I'm not really climbing
the framework, ignoring the rigger's scaffolds, clambering up over naked I
beams, along slippery, fog-wet catwalks, scrambling forward and up in the
pitch-darkness of late night, walking with a sure-footedness that I've never
had in the daytime on the job. Ym not here. I'm back in the room, asleep on the hard bed with the rattly old springs, half hearing the faint sounds made by
the other boarders, the water in the pipes, distant street sounds, muted.
He was inching along now, just a few feet
from the window in the building across the alley from the framework they'd
been putting up little by little, day by day. He knew that window. He'd watched
it out of the corner of his eyes during the day, in between his studying the
blueprints, watching the men snatch hot rivets from the
129
air,
watching them slam them into the holes and ram them home with jerking rivet
guns.
He'd
seen her, as the men had told him he would, framed in that window, slipping a
filmy bra on, half bent over, long hair swaying down, a lush, dark curtain
covering the smooth outlines of breast and belly, thighs hard, graceful,
beautifully engineered. Every morning for weeks now, the men told him, she'd
stood framed in the window, stretching, yawning, brushing her hair, flaunting
her loveliness, secure behind the moat, the deep, deep moat of the ten-foot
alley that lay between her window and the new building.
In
all those weeks, the men said, she hadn't once glanced out at the project. Apparendy she didn't know, or didn't care, that she was
entirely visible to the construction men outside the window.
But
today she'd looked. She'd looked at him, a
long, level look, a look that to him was a cry, loud, piercing. A demand. And he'd known.
Just a dream. A dream. Over and over the voice whispered in
his ears as he squirmed along, then stood up, feeling the gusts of raw wind,
adjusting his body, delicately, carefully, swaying hundreds of feet above the
ground with nothing but the drip, drip of
fog from the beams that checkered the faint light from the watchman's shack far
below and to the front.
His
mouth opened wide in a soundless grin. She was there beyond the darkness of the
window. She had stood before that window, morning after morning, sliding on the
silky nylons, running a voluptuous hand up the long length of her legs,
adjusting the garter belt, knowing the others were watching, not giving a damn,
tempting them, ignoring them, morning after morning, until today he had come. Then she had looked, and now he was here in a dream that might
have been real.
He
launched himself like a diver across the black abyss and was clinging to the
window sill. It had been like flying, a sure, confident thing, that leap across the alley that separated her room from the
project. An alley he'd never have dared jump across in
broad daylight and awake. But now—
With
a smooth flow of leg muscles he was up, one leg over the sill. Another second
and he was in the room, her perfume all about him, her
hair dark against the pillow.
He
came near on cat feet, full of vast assurance, grinning lightly. This wasn't
happening, of course. This was just a dream like all the others he'd had. The
result of a traumatic shock, that psychiatrist had insisted a dozen years ago,
after he'd been foolish enough to tell about the first dream. In time these
dreams should pass. Meanwhile, work, play hard, get yourself tired enough to
sleep. Sleep. Dreamless sleep.
He knelt beside her bed, studying the dim,
pale face framed by the long hair. She stirred slightly, as though sensing his
dream presence. He murmured to her, softly, insistently, telling her of her
hunger, her need for him. Slowly, slowly, her eyes opened, then she was sitting
bolt upright, hand pressed to her mouth, hair dark
against her pale breasts, one shoulder gleaming like captured moonlight.
Urgently
he pressed his mouth against her bare shoulder, and slowly she relaxed, not
speaking, while his hands moved silently, knowingly, with a language of their
own. Once she gasped slightly, then she whispered, and finally, her strong
fingers biting deep into his shoulders, she was silent. Only her body spoke, a
language eager and fiery, a dream
language he understood too well.
Long
after, he launched himself back across the gaping alley, raced along the beams,
soundlessly laughing at the predawn sky, mouth wide, inhaling the fog-laden
air, lungs moving easily, relaxed, certain of himself. This was a dream, and in
it he was slipping down the scaffolding, dropping to the ground. Then he was
running, running, on tiptoe, laughing, laughing. Why
had he gone up there? And in his dream he answered himself: Because she had
looked at him—and he'd known;
Neil Sheldon came up out of the deep, dark
fog of sleep slowly, swimming up, half suffocating until with a jerk he was
sitting up, the clatter of his old alarm clock loud in his shocked ears. He
snapped it off and winced at the pain in his shoulders. He swung to the edge of
the bed and slumped over, elbows on knees. He'd dreamed again last night. And
again, like all the others, the running, the jumping, the girl.
And now he was tired. God, he was tired. This
was too much. Too much. With stiff fingers he picked
up the phone book. After a long search, he found what he wanted and began to
dial a number. . . .
"Would you feel better if you were to
lie down, Mr. Sheldon?" Dr. Eberhardt, the
psychiatrist, said. "You look quite tired."
Neil glanced at the couch and smiled
slightly. "I'm very tired," he said. "Had a hard night, but I'll
sit here, if you don't mind."
The doctor nodded, flipped open a notebook
and gave him a quick, shrewd glance. "I got your file from the Veterans'
Administration. I studied the psychiatric report on you, so I'm fairly
familiar with your initial traumatic shock."
Neil
nodded. "A tank ran over my head," he said bluntly. "It was in
the Hürtgen Forest. I was asleep, knocked out. I had on
my helmet, otherwise—" He shifted nervously in the chair, a faint
sweat on his upper lip. "The ground was muddy. You know,
soft, deep mud. I must have heard the tank coming in my sleep. I woke up,
rolled over and saw it; it loomed directly over me. The tracks looked about ten
feet wide with sharp treads. Next thing I knew, it was on top of me." He
stopped and lit a cigarette. "They tell me it mashed my head about two
feet down in that mud. Some of the other guys in the patrol dug me out
immediately, of course, expecting to find my head flat, but it wasn't." He
grinned, his lips a bit white. "The old G.I. helmet saved my life. Stars and Stripes wrote it up. It was a big thing."
The
psychiatrist wrote rapidly. Then he said quietly, "And shortly after that
you began to have these realistic dreams."
"Realistic is a good
word," Neil said.
The
psychiatrist studied him closely. "Do you remember what your first dream
was all about?"
"I
remember them all," Neil said. "Who could forget— or want to?" The psychiatrist shot him a look, then
scribbled in his notebook.
"The
first dream," Neil said, "was in a station hospital in Le Mans,
France. They took me there to X-ray my head and see if I still had all my
marbles. There was a nurse—" He looked down at his cigarette and grinned.
"She lived in a tent with three others at the time. In a very heavily
guarded area, grassy, strictly off-limits to all male personnel—"
The psychiatrist wrote steadily as Neil
talked. "Her name was Millie, and she was a genuine redhead. Green eyes,
with freckled skin—a real sweet kid." He inhaled deeply on his cigarette.
"She was the first woman I'd seen in a long long
time." He shrugged. "To make a long story short, I dreamed that I got
out of bed, somehow slipped through all those guards, got into her tent and—" He broke off and looked wryly at
the psychiatrist.
"She submitted?"
the psychiatrist said politely.
"Another
good word," Neil said. "She was alone; the other two were on night
duty. Somehow I'd known that before I went in. The funny part of it—I always
have had the feeling that, that what was happening was real, actually
happening, and furthermore, that I'd get away with it, all of it. And always
would."
The psychiatrist nodded and
scribbled away.
"The
next day," Neil said, "there were grass stains on my pajamas, and
Millie, the redhead, didn't show up. I was told she'd changed shifts with
another nurse in a different section. And that night, well, I just didn't
dream. No more dreams after that until I was in England. This time it was a
Scotch gal."
The
psychiatrist nodded encouragingly. "Same general
tiling?"
"Yes,"
Neil said tiredly. "She lived on the second story of a dormitory building.
In my dream I climbed up a vine and got into her room. She woke up and, well,
there was no trouble at all." He stopped talking and looked at his hands.
"Next morning when I woke up in my hospital bed, my hands were all
scratched up, and there was a bit of bark still tangled on the button of my
jacket." He looked soberly at the psychiatrist. "The bark matched the
vine outside the nurse's dormitory exactly."
"Then you believe you actually walked in
your sleep, climbed that vine into this Scotch nurse's room, and she seized the
opportunity?"
"What
else could I believe?" Neil said softly. "The next day the Scotch
nurse didn't show either. Seems she requested a transfer to
another section." He cocked an eyebrow at the psychiatrist.
There
was the sound of a door slamming in the outer room, the reception room. The
door to the doctor's office opened, and a woman's rich voice said, "I'm back, dear. Oh, sorry." The
door closed, and the doctor smiled a bit stiffly at Neil. "Mrs. Eberhardt," he said briefly. "My wife is doubling
for my receptionist while she's on vacation." He cleared his throat and
glanced at his notebook. "These dreams," he said slowly, "you've
had others besides the two you mention?"
Neil
sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Plenty.
I've knocked around—I'm a construction engineer. In college, after the war,
there were several. Acapulco." He moved his shoulders and winced,
frowning. "In one dream I swam a good half mile out into the ocean one
night and boarded a yacht. The owner's daughter."
The psychiatrist nodded, writing. "Carmel, I climbed a cliff from the
beach up to a cottage. A world-famous fashion designer.
And she was more than eager." He broke off. "Luckily," he said
dryly, "they've all been one night only. It's crazy, I know, but it's all so true. And last night—" He began to tell the psychiatrist
about his weird scrambling along the beams, hundreds of feet above the ground,
the wet fog, the sheer danger of it.
When
he was through, the psychiatrist was quiet for a time, then
he said, "I can fully understand what these dreams of yours represent.
They are imaginary escapes, libidinous to an extreme but, nevertheless, escapes
from the deeper nightmare of that tank, the genuine horror of its bearing down
on you, crushing your head down into the mud."
"But
are they imaginary?" Neil asked quietly. "Look at me. I'm completely
knocked out. I told you, after every one of these dreams I have proof:
scratches, sore muscles, wet hair, torn clothes. Something happened to me when
that tank ran over my head, Doctor. Something that's made me receptive, I
suppose you'd call it. Receptive to some —some emanation from a longing woman
that lets me know"
"And
this knowing stimulates your nocturnal visitations?"
"How else to explain it?" Neil shrugged and winced again. "I've
kept quiet since that first time because, well" —he grinned
uncomfortably—"it wasn't exactly hard to take, the knowing a gal was eager and willing."
The
psychiatrist looked at him, a noncommittal expression on his face. "Then
you are convinced these dreams of yours are actual occurrences?" He
stopped when Neil rose and began unbuttoning his shirt.
"I've
tried to make a study of this in my own way," Neil said. "I realize
fully how disturbed I sound, schizophrenic or worse, but I'm not kidding. Not
even a little bit. If you want, I'll take you down to the job. I'll show you
the room. The alley." He broke off, shuddering
slightly.
"I'm
not a kid anymore, Doctor," he said. "This Errol Flynn stuff has got
to stop. That alley was every bit of ten feet across, with a drop of a couple
of hundred, and during the dream it didn't even faze me." He shrugged out
of the shirt. "But even that sort of thing isn't what bothers me. It's
this—" He turned so that the
doctor could see his back.
The
psychiatrist sucked in his breath and came closer to examine the marks on both
Neil's shoulders. Deep scratches, like claw marks, five of them on each side,
as though something—someone—with sharp nails had clung to him with fierce
strength. They were raw and sore-looking, and Neil winced when the
psychiatrist touched them.
"They're
certainly fresh-looking," the doctor said wonderingly. "And you say
she . . . last night?"
"The
worst one yet," Neil said wearily. "It seems that the desperate ones,
the really, well, I look at them, I know, and
in my sleep I go."
"Now,
Mr. Sheldon," the psychiatrist said briskly, "I'm sure that in time
we can completely rid you of these fantasies of yours. And as for these
scratches, you probably got them on the job and—"
Neil
swung around and buttoned up his shirt, a look of exhausted resignation on his
face. "I don't give a damn whether or not you believe me, Doctor. All I
want is to stop this, this power, I suppose you'd have to call it. I'm not a young man anymore. I'm tired.
Completely. I need my sleep, and besides," he
looked haunted, "they're getting worse and worse. Each one seems more
desperate, more demanding. Stronger." He looked despairingly at the
psychiatrist. "Can't you see, when I'm asleep I'm invincible, but when
I'm awake, I pay for it."
The
doctor patted him reassuringly, professionally, on the arm. He glanced
surreptitiously at his watch. "We'll have you right as rain in time, Mr.
Sheldon. If you'll cooperate, the thing is half licked. And I can see you're
eager to co-operate. Fine. Fine."
He pressed a buzzer on his desk and began scribbling on a prescription pad.
"You rang?" The doctor's wife, Mrs.
Eberhardt, stood in the doorway. She was big. Even in
low heels she stood six feet. Perhaps a dozen years younger than the doctor,
she was big-breasted, long-legged, with swelling hips filling the too-tight
uniform she wore to the bursting point. Her eyes were electric blue, wide,
long-lashed, her ripe-wheat hair pulled severely back from a broad, calm brow.
When she brushed a loose strand back from her forehead a set of rings winked
and flashed on the third finger of her large left hand. She was a Valkyrie, heroic, massive, but perfectly proportioned for
her size.
"Oh,
yes, my dear," the psychiatrist said. "Will you give Mr. Sheldon an
appointment, preferably as soon as possible." He
saw Neil's quizzical glance, and he smiled proudly. "My
wife, Mrs. Eberhardt. Mr. Sheldon."
She
looked at him then. Their eyes met, and Neil wavered slightly, then straightened. "Mr. Sheldon," she acknowledged, her voice resonant, full of hidden power and
depths. He nodded, shoulders stiff.
The
doctor finished scribbling on the pad and tore it off. "I've made up a
prescription for you, Mr. Sheldon. You're to take two of these each night,
plenty of water," He smiled dryly. "They'll help you to stay in bed.
Work hard, play hard, try to get to bed with a relaxed
mind and the determination—"
He
broke off. Eyes narrowed, Neil Sheldon was still looking at the big, blond Mrs.
Eberhardt. "Mr. Sheldon," the psychiatrist
said gently, "your prescription."
Neil
started, his face suddenly pale. He tore his eyes from
Mrs. Eberhardt, took the prescription from the doctor, and folding it thoughtfully, slipped it into his
pocket.
"If you have another of these
dreams," the doctor said,
THE MAN WHO KNEW 139
"don't hesitate to call me at my home—any hour." He
snapped his fingers. "Except for tonight, tomorrow and
Sunday. I'll be attending a convention in Los Angeles, and I wouldn't
want my wife to be disturbed in the middle of the night." He smiled
easily. "Not that I expect you'll need to call."
"I
would prefer not to," Neil said slowly. He watched the controlled motion
of Mrs. Eberhardt's hips as she walked to her desk
and sat down, crossing her legs effortlessly, smoothly. His face became
haggard, he licked dry lips. "Do you mind, Doctor," he said in a low
voice, "if I leave by your private door and phone you personally for an
appointment later?"
"Phone
me?" The doctor laughed heartily. He draped an arm
about Sheldon's shoulder and propelled him easily, professionally, out of the
door and to his wife's desk. "It'll just take a moment for Mrs. Eberhardt to make the appointment. Come now, Mr. Sheldon.
She won't bite you!"
He
was still chuckling when he closed the door behind him, leaving Neil silent,
staring at her strong white teeth as she smiled at him, and he knew, closing
his eyes against her smile, that the psychiatrist had been wrong.
She would bite.
Cathartic
It
had been moving through space for
a meaningless length of time, a chunk of pure siliceous
matter, absorbing faint emanations from distant bodies
which maintained its life but nothing else. It lived but
had no will nor intelligence. It could grow
explosively,
but only under certain rigidly specified conditions, none
of which was present in the blank immensity of intra-
galactic areas. But it had a purpose, a very definite pur-
pose, a destiny to fulfill before it ceased to be alive. For
it was not immortal. One thing could cause its immediate
dissolution. And, again, that thing occurred only under
definite, specific conditions. x
As
it hurtled through space it approached a minor galaxy, slipped through star
clusters and continued on, nearer and nearer to a certain faint star until at
last, as inevitably it had been intended to do, it fell victim to the
gravitational pull of a satellite planet that circled that class G star.
This
planet was extraordinary in that, of all the billions of such bits of matter in
space, it was among the mere handful that existed in such perfect, delicate
balance within its system that it was capable of supporting a multitude of
life forms, some of them of a high order, complex in structure and quite
intelligent.
Despite their rather advanced instruments,
the intel-
140
CATHARTIC 141
ligent inhabitants of the planet failed to pick up
the approaching body of matter until its mile-wide bulk burned fiery white as
it arched through the protective envelope and plummeted into the very heart of
a vast, sandy desert, some three and a half million square miles in area. The
heat generated by its passage through the atmosphere had affected it just
enough to awaken the dormant life within.
The
sandy wasteland wherein the mass lay was only one of too many such arid spots,
comprising millions of square miles of totally infertile land which dotted this
middle-aged, somewhat ailing planet. At either slightly flattened pole of this
globe were immense ice fields, miles thick, which extended also for many
millions of square miles down the bulging shoulders of the world. Frozen, sterile land.
It possessed enormously high mountains,
eternally snowcapped, windswept, incapable of
supporting life. This planet further was covered by many great bodies of water,
some of them thousands of miles wide and many miles deep. For hundreds of
millions of years, under inconceivable pressures, their black, cold depths had
been totally barren of productive life.
The buried lump of siliceous life grew. It
grew by direct mathematical progression. Every substance necessary for its
rapid expansion was at hand: an inexhaustible supply of silica and an unending
flood of fierce, direct radiations from the nearby sun.
It grew. The desert was approximately eight
hundred miles long and fourteen hundred wide. And downward, sideways, upward,
the silica parasite grew, quite literally devouring the stupendous bulk of the
sandy waste.
Shoving its jagged, already colossal mass up
and out and down, faster and faster, absorbing the hot, life-giving radiations
from the sun, it grew.
The
first intelligent inhabitant of the globe to notice the strange phenomenon was
one of a group of a nomadic tribe which customarily wandered over the endless
expanse of the desert. Shielding his eyes, the lean brown man saw a great
towering mountain where none had stood before. It appeared from his distance to
be several miles high and perhaps fifty miles long. He shrugged and said
nothing. Mirages were common in that pitilessly hot, dry region.
The
pilot of one of several flying machines searching the area for a downed machine
spotted off in the distance over this region not normally traversed an
incredible mountain range, hitherto uncharted. He was flying at thirty
thousand feet and seemed to be about level with its highest point. It
stretched in both directions as far as he could see. It was a totally arid
chain, with no trace of life or vegetation. He reported the sighting, but in
the routine of recovering the downed machine his report was ignored.
But not for long. The thing grew. It covered a land mass some
two million square miles in area. It was twelve miles high. And yet so remote
was this inaccessible region that, except for the few reports filtering in, the
gigantic intruder might have been on the far side of the moon for all the stir it created among the more civilized races.
It
grew until it reached a proportion of near critical size, and then the
intelligent inhabitants of the globe were immediately aware that something was
happening.
At
the summer solstice the planet did not begin its tedious, creaking precession
toward the autumnal equinox. Instead it continued its downward swing until
northern hemispheres basked under direct rays of the fierce sun.
CATHARTIC 143
Equatorial countries froze. Near-arctic
countries became temperate. Slowly, slowly, the planet struggled to right
itself in its accustomed wobble that produces the seasons.
Ponderously
in its cosmic roll the planet righted itself and started its reverse motion.
And still the intruder from space grew. By this time the intelligent
inhabitants were aware of the siliceous parasite. They took exhaustive borings,
chipped it, analyzed it, took soundings, and all reached the obvious conclusion
that it was something beyond their puny efforts to comprehend.
The more farsighted, after quietly taking
measurements, realized that the mass would in a short time double itself and
reach a critical point which could result in only one thing. Those wiser and
more farseeing ones immediately made what preparations they best could, but in
the end for the wise and the ignorant it was all the same.
With a sudden, rending twist the planet
flipped, overbalanced by the great outcropping of solid rock on its flank. The
globe shuddered, split asunder and spewed forth great masses of rock and
flaming matter. Carbon dioxide flooded the atmosphere, and in seconds those not
crushed died from asphyxiation. The polar caps began their long, slow melting
process. Mountains leveled, and the unique, life-sustaining globe actually
expanded, smoothing out her wrinkles as her flaming core pushed outward on her
crust.
Mile-high
walls of water swept over the land, and with all
barriers down eventually flooded even the remote sunken area in which the
monolithic siliceous structure towered.
The warm water rose all about the base of the
monolith, and then, as the fat clouds spread over the entire globe and poured
down steaming rain, the condition was fulfilled and the parasite died. Slowly,
slowly, the silicon
structure dissolved, slipping sideways and down into
the shallow ocean.
Gradually
the structure reverted to its unimaginable number of components, carpeting the
bed of the ocean for hundreds of thousands of miles with tiny grains of sand,
sterile, gleaming, forever one with the parent body.
And
the planet lived on, young again, robust, spewing forth its volcanoes, rumbling
lustily in its guts, raining mightily from its skies. And within the warm womb
of its shallow, all encompassing seas, life stirred and propagated and made
ready for new adventures.
The Second Experiment
They
are meeting in
every embassy, every ministry; the predawn lights are glowing throughout a
world hushed, as on the eve of some impending catastrophe that all are
powerless to prevent.
It
is exactly two years, eleven months and five days to the hour since I
interviewed Dr. Andrew MacPhee and, as chief
psychiatrist of project Far-Traveler,
personally delivered my
diagnosis of his mental condition to the President of the United States, as
well as to other selected members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
one or two others.
What that diagnosis was I choose not to say.
But today, as Dr. MacPhee predicted almost to the
hour, a crisis directly affecting the total future of mankind has finally
occurred. And now I'm terribly afraid that the rest of his prediction will also
come true.
Since
all that was required of me was an official diagnosis of Dr. MacPhee's condition, I did not, in reporting to the
distinguished group, go fully into my reasons for my diagnosis. I did not
reveal the complete story of the flight of the Far-Traveler and MacPhee's
reason for destroying it.
In view of the ultimatum that is splashed on
every paper in the world today, I now wish to reveal in full everything that
Dr. MacPhee said to me after his escape capsule was
145
netted in
the South Atlantic Ocean two years, eleven months and six days ago. There may
yet be time, if enough of you believe—and act—to forestall the rest of his prediction.
. . .
Far-Traveler was the best kept secret in the world, up to
and including the Manhattan Project which developed the A-bomb and led
inexorably to MacPhee's decision one hundred miles
above the earth, upon his return from the successful Venus flight.
I knew about the explosion, of course, as did
the whole world: thermonuclear blasts on the order of five or six megatons, one
hundred miles above the earth, are a bit difficult to conceal, even with the
then imperfect radar satellites. What I didn't know, until Brigadier General
Dunn's urgent call, was that the explosion had been the destruction of the Far-Traveler and that MacPhee
had been found alive in the escape capsule off the tip of Africa.
They
flew MacPhee in by special jet, and before I interviewed
him, General Dunn gave me a quick briefing. We'd worked together before—on many
occasions, in fact. Personnel connected with the Far-Traveler project tended to develop weird neuroses
under the pressure of the crash program. As chief of the project, it had been
General Dunn's thankless job to jar them back onto the track or remand them
into protective custody. And as chief psychiatrist it was my job to advise
him.
I
looked long and hard at General Dunn. I was shocked at what I saw. His face was
haggard with deep lines of fatigue and worry. The strong fingers gripping the
edge of my desk were trembling with tension.
"MacPhee destroyed the Far-Traveler deliberately," he said hoarsely.
"He admitted it. My God! Three years of unremitting work. Two billion dollars, culminating in the greatest triumph in man's
history. Gone. Destroyed in a millisecond, and
the reason he gives for doing it—" "What reason did he give?"
He
told me, talking swiftly, at certain parts half choking with reluctance to
even speak of such things here in the most advanced citadel of science on
earth. When he finished talking, I stared at him for a long moment, then
flipped quickly through the thick dossier on my desk— MacPhee's.
I found what I wanted: religious classification. As I'd suspected, there was
one word there in bold type: Atheist.
"There's
absolutely no doubt," I said, "that he actually reached Venus? He's
fantastically brilliant; perhaps he may have failed and devised this story as a
means of deceiving—"
Dunn made a slashing, impatient gesture with
his hands. "Impossible. He left on the planned orbit: circling the earth
once, then out through the Capetown Anomaly
so-called—the gap in the Van Allen radiation belt over the South Atlantic near
the tip of Africa."
He
looked at me broodingly. "He reached Venus. Every tracking station we have
pinpointed him along the route outward bound: Sugar Grove, Jodrell
Bank, Millstone Hill, Singapore. Sugar Grove followed him until his signal
faded, seven million miles out. Right on schedule.
Thirty-five days in flight. Six days on the planet. Thirty-seven days, seven
hours return."
He
shook his head despairingly. "No. He landed on Venus. He returned. Sugar
Grove picked him up seven million miles out. Again on
schedule. And one hundred miles above the earth he deliberately
destroyed the Far-Traveler
by removing the control
magnets from the pinch-effect generators. He admits this. He set it up as a delayed
action, then abandoned the spaceship in the escape capsule."
"Did he bring back
anything from Venus?"
"No.
Nothing but this . . . this madness—if it is." He
leaned over the desk. "It's up to you to determine if he really is
cracked, and if he is, what his chances of recovery are."
He
straightened slowly, his haggard face twitching. "We need this man more
than anyone on earth—we need Mac-Phee. Without his
co-operation, there can't be another Far-Traveler. Not
in our lifetime." He clenched his fists. "And MacPhee
won't co-operate. Not in his present condition."
"I'll
do everything possible," I said. "Send him in, and incidentally, it
can't be as bad as all that. Some hundreds of fine minds worked on this
project; no one man is indispensable, not even a MacPhee.
It may take time, but we'll build another one."
He
turned and looked bleakly at me. "No," he said, "MacPhee is an original; a man out of his time, like
Leonardo was in his era. He used formulae with an entirely new math of his own
invention. We have it, but who understands it? The pinch-effect generator he
devised—in theory we have a couple of men who understand it—but only in theory,
and that vaguely. But MacPhee built it, and it worked. He alone knows why or how. He alone was capable of
piloting the Far-Traveler,
of juggling a dozen
constants in his head, of setting up the computers within the ship that guided
it through an interlocking maze of gravitational forces."
Despair
gripped his face. "Even if we had another Far-Traveler, who could operate it?"
He
went to the door, opened it and beckoned. "Dr. MacPhee,
will you come in, please?" Beyond him I could see two military police
officers, majors, standing stiffly at attention. When MacPhee
walked in, General Dunn stared at him, an eager, pathetically hopeful look on
his face. MacPhee nodded impersonally to him, and
Dunn, shoulders sagging, left the room.
"Sit
down, Doctor," I said to MacPhee. As he walked
to the chair and sat, I examined his every movement closely. He looked at me,
jaw relaxed, eyes composed. His long frame was completely at ease. No different
from the many other times, during the hectic days of the crash program, that I'd observed him. He was still the most completely
self-possessed man I'd ever seen.
He
looked intently at the small model of the Far-Traveler on my desk, and I studied him further. And
suddenly, looking at him, I felt my skin pucker. This man, quietly inspecting
the tiny model of his own creation, this man had walked on a distant world.
He
had looked upon the void in utter solitude. He had rushed through vacuum, a
vulnerable spark of animate life, hurtling across an abyss of cold, inimical
space, a mystery whirling through mystery.
He had left a confirmed
atheist. He had returned—
He
caught my scrutiny, and he smiled pleasantly, the wrinkles around his eyes
creasing deeply. Somewhat underweight, his unobtrusive suit hung loosely on
his rangy frame. Crew-cut thinning hair, an ordinary man, it seemed. Only the
brilliance of his gaze showed the luminous intelligence that burned in his
brain. This man by every count was beyond genius. And yet—
I picked up the model of the ship he'd conceived, designed, flown to
Venus and then destroyed. It was a smooth ovoid with no fins, points,
protuberances of any ^ kind. I turned it over in my hands thoughtfully.
"A timeless
shape," MacPhee said quietly. "An
egg."
"Deceptively
simple, also like an egg," I said. "Did you experience any difficulty
during the . . . the flight?"
He
crossed his legs and shook his head. "Actually, the principle of the Far-Traveler is simple once we had enough power to apply
it. We got our power—thermonuclear power—with our pinch-effect generators. And
with virtually unlimited power, we were able to utilize electromagnetic fields
in space as an energy source."
He
sat casually, completely at ease, not by a gesture, a twitch, a tremor of
the voice did he show any abnormality. He talked easily still looking intently
at the model.
"By particle-accelerating devices—one to
accelerate negative particles, the other to accelerate positive particles— the
ship is theoretically able to move at any speed in any field. And in an
atmosphere the atmosphere directly about the ship would partake of its
motion—no friction."
He
said this last without any particular emphasis, though the first time he'd
proven this in actual flight within our atmosphere, braking to complete stops,
accelerating to thousands of miles without any noticeable gravitational effect,
the space lab people had gone out of their minds with delirious joy,
"In outer space," he said, "in
a cosmic field with the positive switched on, the ship gravitates toward
negative charges in the field; and vice-versa. Direction of motion, of course,
is controlled by changing the charge of the ship."
He shifted and smiled faintly. "I made the flight to Venus in forty-eight
minutes, Earth time."
I clutched the smooth little model and stared
at him. "How could that be?" I said. "The entire journey was programmed
for a two and a half months' trip out and back. Isn't that so?"
He
nodded. "Based on the assumed maximum velocity, which was limited by the
amount of power it was thought we were able to generate, something on the order
of twenty-eight thousand miles an hour."
He
looked slightly apologetic. "Actually, with a few very minor adjustments,
it was possible to attain any speed up to the velocity of the propagation of
magnetic lines of force, the speed of light. Einstein was in error on that
point. I did not achieve infinite mass as I approached the speed of light; I
merely began to use power in geometrical progression, which made it necessary
for me to slow to something a bit under ten per cent
of the speed of light."
"But
they tracked you for the first seven million miles and apparendy
noticed nothing unusual."
"I
held down the speed for^ the period of observation both going and
returning."
"You mentioned this to
General Dunn?"
He made a wry expression.
"Not yet. But I will."
"Then
this means you spent a considerable period of time unaccounted for—either going
through space or on the planet Venus?"
He
looked beyond at the blank wall behind my desk. In a slow, somber voice he
began describing what the voyage had been like: the stars, burning, burning, blazing
immensities of malevolent light, fixed immovably, unflicker-ing
against a background of impenetrable black. The abyss of outer space, he said,
is harsh, alien, terrifying in its utterly remote, its
cold, dark magnificence.
The abyss of outer space. But Venus is not of that other, outer cosmos. Sharing a common creation
with Earth, Venus is inextricably bound to the sun by the same interlocking
fields of force that cradle the Earth in
perpetual orbit.
Forty-eight
minutes. But as the great spinning planet had approached, gleaming brilhandy, its tremendous cloud covering reflecting back
the glory of the sun, through some inverse Einsteinian
principle, he'd lived days, weeks, centuries. He'd seen the family of planets
circling the sun. And beyond, the awful majesty of the cosmos, moving in
ordered precision. And over it all, he said, he'd felt a presence that was
divine.
I
watched MacPhee intently. He returned my look, and I
saw the deep sadness in his eyes.
"I
spent nearly the entire two and a half months on the planet Venus," he
said, "and now, at last, I understand Adam's grief at losing
Paradise."
I
said nothing. I searched his face. Conviction and absolute sincerity were
there—and the sadness. My eyes dropped to the dossier on the desk before me.
"Venus
is Genesis, the first step after Man's creation, repeated
once again." His voice was low. "The clouds screen the close sun to a
soft, indirect glow. And bathed in that pearly light lies a planet of warm
shallow seas, with gentle winds, cool showers—and life, profligate, teeming,
crowding the seas, the islands, the continents. Life as it must have been here
in the beginning. Serenely joyful, divinely innocent."
"By life do you mean
beings comparable to ... to us?"
He
examined me searchingly; then he nodded. "Yes, as we were before the
fall."
"I ... I don't quite understand, Doctor. The fall?"
"Intelligent
beings, male and female, living in exquisite harmony," he said. "With one another, with the beasts of the fields, the birds of
the air and the fish of the seas. In the two months I was there I saw no
sickness. No
one died. I
moved from one hemisphere to the other, and everywhere it was the same. The
people lived each day as though there had never been a yesterday and tomorrow
would never come. Do you understand what I'm telling you? They wore no clothes
and needed none. They had no laws, no rituals, and needed none. Even though
their race is nearly as ancient as ours, none were old as we know age. These
were innocents in a state of perpetual grace. Only I on all
that planet knew the meaning of evil. Only I."
I
heard the final bitterness in his words. He was staring down at the model of
the Far-Traveler on my desk.
"I
am not Lucifer," he said after a long silence, "and so I left. And
when I approached the outer reaches of this green despoiled planet of ours, I
destroyed the Far-Traveler."
He gave me a sudden odd
smile. "At least I'll take my chances with the rest of my own kind."
"But why? What was your motive in destroying the ship?"
He
picked up the model of the Far-Traveler and
cupped it in his hands.
"I
give you planet Earth," he said sofdy. "Green, with fertile lands, equitable climates, vast seas.
Earth, with blue sky, a vigorous, eminentiy wonderful
planet. And I give you Man."
He
stood up, towering over my desk. "I give you Man, possessed of a brain
bursting with creativity, who chooses to conquer others but never himself. Who,
possessed of free will, refuses to mature, emotionally, morally.
Who chooses, rather, to rend the skies with radioactive bombs, polluting his
seas, the very rains that wash his Earth. Who claims a
soul but denies it in the name of war. Living with filth that
never should have been. Bearing diseases easily eradicated if only
enough cared. Growing enough food for all, but permitting most to starve. Man,
crushing his brother, seeking bigger and better means to destroy himself,
living out his days in hate and fear."
He
held up the Far-Traveler
model. "I give you
arrogance: Man, certain that he alone is chosen to be in God's image; longing
to swarm throughout the universe, an emissary of death, filled with the virus
of pride, contaminated with original sin. I give you this creature, this
sentient, brilliant, immature savage, landing on Venus, bearing his seeds of
self-destruction. Man, with his bitter dark intelligence, running unchecked
through the second Garden of Eden."
He threw the model violently to the floor. It
smashed to hundreds of glittering pieces. There was a long silence.
I
cleared my throat. "Let me see if I understand your motives in destroying
the Far-Traveler," I told him. "You believe that were we to
colonize Venus, we'd corrupt— perhaps destroy—a race of beings who are perfectly adjusted to their environment. And you
feel this is wrong. Is that it?"
"It's
not just a question of colonizing one planet alone," he said. "The
universe lies beyond, planet after planet, each fertile, fecund—but empty. Each
unique, capable of sustaining life richly; offering in abundance all of God's
limitless gifts. Through unimaginable gulfs of time and space they've been
waiting for the magic touch of intelligent life, and for what? For a
repetition of the senseless savagery, the brutal, mindless, greedy plunder that
the Earth has endured?"
He shook his head slowly.
"I think not," he said gently.
"Man
will never leave this Earth. I believe we lost that right long, long ago when
the Life Force, the Creator, God, if you will, recognized that the first great
experiment here had gone wrong. And so He tried a second experiment on Venus.
And there it has succeeded."
I
stared at him. "The implications of that, true or not, are appalling even
for an unreligious person," I said. "However, there is one great flaw
in your argument. You see, you did leave the Earth. If one man can do it, then
another also can achieve it. And in time, millions."
He looked
down at the floor, that odd smile on his face again. "I also
believe," he said, "that the Far-Traveler— and
I—are all a part of the . . . the second experiment." He looked at me, and
again I saw the light of pure intelligence in his eyes. "They are
divinely innocent on Venus but brilliant. They have remarkably advanced mental
powers, but their knowledge encompasses the spiritual rather than the physical
world. However, I believe that I was sent to implant the seeds of physical
knowledge. And I did."
"That's rather a lot to accomplish in
only two months or so, even for you," I said. "How did you do
it?"
He
smiled. "Among other things, I left them a completely finished working
model of the Far-Traveler"
"But
why? Of
what use could it be to them?"
"I
told you," he said, "that I believed the experiment here on Earth had
failed and that it had succeeded on Venus. Logically, then, they are to be the
rightful heirs to the universe. The universe that might have
been ours. And when that time comes for them, they will be ready with
the Far-Traveler"
"I
fail to see the logic in that," I said. "Even assuming what you say
is true, it would take many generations, surely, for the beings on Venus to
attain the technical knowledge necessary to build and operate other Far-Travelers. Am I right?"
He nodded. "That's
entirely possible."
I
looked at him sympathetically. "However unworthy of it we might be, man,
nevertheless, has the technical knowledge and capability for space flight right now. In a few years we'll be once again on Venus.
It was most unrealistic of you to believe that by destroying the Far-Traveler it would deter us from further flights for
more than a few
years."
"A
few years is the same as forever," he said.
"With the Far-Traveler
as a working model, it
would have been merely a problem in engineering for us to make bigger and
better ones. Immense, capable of sustained flights anywhere
in the universe, carrying enough computers so that anyone could pilot them.
But without the Far-Traveler
it will take years to put
even a small payload on Venus, and at that Venus would have to be in a
favorable position, which is again only periodically. Using multistage
reaction-engined rockets, the odds against success
are very great indeed. And meanwhile, in only about three years—"
He
hesitated. "One of my reasons in building the Far-Traveler/' he said, "is
because ever since Los Alamos I've charted a trend on Earth, watching the lines
converge. I'd hoped that before the inevitable climax—"
He
broke off and moved shattered bits of the Far-Traveler model about with the tip of a shoe. "I
will ask you, as a man
intimately acquainted with the emotional processes of the human mind, if in
about three years every man on Earth was suddenly asked to divide his wealth,
to take all he owned that was superfluous and pass it on to those who had quite
literally nothing, what would his response be?"
"It would depend upon the
circumstances," I said, puzzled. "But what has this to do with the Far-Traveler?"
"It
has everything to do with it," he answered. "I will ask you again.
Suppose in about three years an enormous group of those who had nothing
suddenly gained a position of equal power with
those who had a superabundance of the world's goods? Suppose they then demanded
the right to distribute their starving peoples about the face of the Earth, for
each to have a bit of fertile land, a share of the natural God-given
resources—minerals, timber, water power—to share all the wealth of this
wonderful planet equally? What would be the result? Would those who had too
much willingly give it over; agree to equitable division of the entire
Earth?" He paused. "Or would they refuse?"
"It would depend upon the alternatives;
that is to say," I told him, "what would happen should they refuse,
under threat of force, to share their possessions even equally."
"The alternatives?" He looked steadily at me. "Your answer explains why the first
experiment on Earth has failed. From the moment man walked erect, saw the
stars, knew that he was alive,
with all the blessings the
term connotes, he has resorted to force and force alone to obtain his ends. He
has lived the lie that the
only alternative to force is force. And so he wasted his heritage seeking more and more powerful force until
at last he achieved the ultimate: the force to which there can be no alternative. And when it burst in dazzling splendor above
the New Mexico desert, the message it brought was overwhelmingly evident: Love
one another—or die."
He
walked over to the globe next to my bookcase and put his finger on a great land
mass that sprawled over the shoulder of the globe. He gave me a grim look, and
once again I was conscious of the sheer intelligence behind those eyes.
"In
only about three years," he said quietiy,
"this is where it will start: the final end of the first experiment on
Earth. From this nation, this sleeping giant of incredible
biological force. Long dormant, historically the mental equals of any
others, but a nation so terribly bereft of the good things of Earth as to be
reduced to the level of the beasts. This nation, practicing infanticide, yet
swollen with the sheer weight of human flesh, propagating in direct geometric
progression, until now it encompasses a full quarter of the Earth's swarming
billions. Desperate for living room, for arable soil, for power to meet its
increasingly pressing needs. Until finally, choked off by the fearful world
powers only too aware of its mighty potential, this nation is forced to turn
inward, to utilize all the brain power of its numberless masses. And one day,
out of that massed brain, it will come, the only force that man truly respects:
the bomb. And with the threat of that force this nation will put forth its
demands."
I
stared at that spot on the globe for long seconds; then I said slowly,
"It's too bad that conditions on Earth merit even for an instant the
consideration that such a situation could arise. But if it should, what do you think
the outcome would be?"
He
gave the globe a sudden spin, watching the myriad cities, mountains, lakes and
oceans twist beneath him.
"Man
will never leave this Earth," he said, "for the condition of man is
this: Love or die. But
he has lived the lie too long. And in the face of that threat, that desperate
demand calling for the deepest outpouring of love, man will accept the
alternative. He will meet force with force. And so—"
He stopped the turning globe with his long,
powerful hands and gave me a calm, level look.
"And
so—the first experiment will have come to its end. And one day in the very
distant future a Far-Traveler
from Venus will pause here
outward bound and find the Earth sweet and wholesome—and empty of life; ready
at long last to receive those who know and practice the deepest meaning of
love."
It
is exactly two years, eleven months and five days to the hour since I
interviewed Dr. Andrew MacPhee. They are meeting in
every embassy, every ministry; the predawn lights are glowing throughout a
world hushed as on the eve of some impending catastrophe that all are powerless
to prevent.
Last
night, high over the barren wastes of the Gobi Desert, China detonated an
H-bomb missile of unbelievable power and magnitude. A bomb cheaply made,
already stockpiled in quantity. And this morning, with nothing to lose but
people, China made known to the world her demands.
A Son of Eve
I should have remembered.
When the mighty ships crept out of the lagoon
one by one and left only the island bare of men, I should have guessed. When
the strange flying machine they called a 'copter returned and searched each
tiny spit of sand, scoured each hidden valley, I should have taken warning. But
1 am young, not yet a man. A son of Eve, consumed with
her fatal weakness, with no father to tell me what is right.
And so I did what no man
has done before.
I
should have known why none could remain; hadn't the good missionary told how He spoke with a voice of thunder and shielded Himself from men's sight by
clouds and mist?
But
I did not remember. I was curious. And for that my tongue is shriveled in my
mouth. I am blind. I bleed though 1 am
not cut. My hair is gone, and my body is like the octopus, boneless. I did not
heed the warning, and for that I am wrapped in flame and brightness and His
awful voice sounds ceaselessly in my ears.
Eniwetakuu
was our home and all my days I knew no other. I was a babe, but I remember well
the little yellow men who came from the west, hissing and smiling, pointing
their guns and smiling. They killed my father, and my mother died soon after.
But the good white missionary
160
they
left alone, he who taught me to speak English. It was he who told me of the
stern God who was kind, who was just, who loved us all
dearly. And of Eve, our first mother, who succumbed to the weakness within her
and so banished us all from paradise. Truly I am a son of Eve.
And when the Americans came, the missionary
told us that God was good to us for the Americans were our saviors. And they
were.
They
were kind; they were just, like their great white God who is my God. They
rebuilt the homes, treated our sick, and always they laughed and smiled and
were gentle to us. And so when many years had passed, when the ships began to
come one by one into the lagoon, more and more of them, in greater numbers than
even old Palinau, who remembers the Germans, ever
recalled, we knew something tremendous was happening.
Then
they called us together and the admiral, who is chief of all the islands, spoke
to us. His voice was solemn ;is he told us that we
must leave. Eniwetakuu would soon be kapu. The tall admiral, with his white hair waving in the steady wind, talked
and old Palinau listened and told those who could not
understand what he said.
"We
know it is a hard thing to leave this lovely island," the admiral said,
while the birds wheeled overhead and beyond the reef the mother sea thundered
deep and slow.
"You
have been through much grief, many hardships. I know how your people suffered
under the Japanese and before them, the Germans. And yet you were firm and
survived because you love this island."
Old Palinau stood straight and proud when he
said this.
All the old ones folded their arms and nodded, looking fierce and strong.
"I know how sacred your burial plots,
your ancient villages are to you," the admiral said, "and yet we
Americans have tried to be good governors, to make you feel that we are proud
to be your protectors, your friends."
This
was true, and we murmured, there in the cool windswept shade of the palms with
the pigs rooting, fat and contented, the scurrying chickens scratching beneath
the fine raised houses the Americans had built for us. They were good; they
were kind. I know the God of the Americans who is my God is good and kind like
the missionary says. But he is strong. He is angry when we do wrong; 1 tremble for what is yet to come, for I have
done wrong.
"We hope that you will realize,"
the admiral said, "that what we are about to ask you is not only for the
good of America; it is for the good of all—not only you on the island but the
whole world. We have a power mightier than any known to man. It is a power that
must be tested and tried, so that in the end the greatest ultimate good may
come from it."
He stopped, and we looked beyond, out to the
great lagoon where the marvelous ships from America lay, heavy, unmoving, even
though the surf surged and swept into the lagoon. They are made of iron and yet
they float like my little moku. They carry great guns, and I have heard them when they fought the little
yellow men.
"We
need this atoll." Speaking slow and deep, old Pal-inau
uttered the words the admiral spoke. "It is here that we have chosen to
test this God-given power that we may know how to control it so that the world
will be a safer and happier place for all of us."
We
looked at one another, wonder in our eyes. Was not the world already a safe and
wonderful place? The great mother sea still murmured and moved ceaselessly,
teeming with fish. The coconuts grew in heavy clusters in the myriad palms. The
turtles laid their eggs each night and dragged their silly trails back to the
sea to point the way to their nests. Life was good. And yet the Americans were
kind. They were our friends. They would not tell us an untruth.
"You
will be paid generously for your land," the admiral said, and already the
murmuring rose as the old ones, who do not care for change, began to raise
their loud laments. "We will move you to any other island you desire: Rongelap, Wotto, Rikieppu; you name it, and by God! the
U.S. Navy will take you there, pigs, chickens, tin roof and all."
The
old ones argued, loudly, bitterly, with Palinau, but
I did not argue. To me it was as clear as the water in the lagoon. Was not Eniwetakuu the loveliest of all the islands? Was not this
power given by God? Then what more fitting spot in all the
world for this power to be tested could be found? It was shameful that they
should argue, for this was an honor beyond all honors. What they requested,
surely we should do.
"What
is this power?" the old ones asked. "Why should we be removed? If the
great white God says here is the place to test His gift, surely we can give
them room in the hills. Why must the entire island be emptied? Are we not
worthy to be near this testing? Are we not friends?"
Gently
the admiral explained to Palinau, who told the old
ones, that this power was great; greater than the erupting volcano as the
volcano is greater than the cooking lire. The island must be empty of all men.
I should have guessed then, for did not Moses leave the others behind when he
climbed the mountain shrouded in clouds and mist? But I did not remember, and I
did what no man has done.
The old women wept, but all the people were
moved. I had no father to tell me to leave, so I remained behind. My father's
mother chose to go to Aigigin-ae, which the Americans
call Ailinginae,- and when
she left, already our island was changed, with tall masts, higher than the
palms, raised about the lagoon. The huge ships came in, filled with men and
strange machines.
And all for the power. The power, mightier than anything given to man
before. The power that would change the world.
How would it be? Magnificent, of course. Filled with
sparkling colored lights and sound, perhaps like the rockets the sailors fired
on Independence Day, only infinitely more wonderful, for this was a gift from
God.
In
the lagoon, perhaps an hour's paddle away, there is a tiny island, a spit of
rock and trees and sand. It was here I kept my little moku—what the Americans call a pirogue. I kept it
hidden, covered with palm fronds, for I was consumed with the weakness of
Eve—curiosity.
I wanted to see the power.
There
were many of my people who remained to help the Americans, so I went unnoticed.
I watched and waited, and when finally the flimsy little building in the middle
of the island was ready, when the men had climbed the tall masts and checked
the curious machines atop them for the last time, I knew the moment was near.
All
the men were counted, drawn up in rows. Then they entered the ships which one
by one slipped out of the lagoon, leaving a few, lifeless, behind. Then the
strange flying 'copter flew over the entire island, over each little spit and
rock in the lagoon, searching, searching. But my moku was well hidden beneath the palms. I crouched in it, tense and unmoving,
and soon the machine went away.
All was quiet, a strange, waiting silence
that filled my blood with water, and still I did not guess. The consuming
desire to see the power held me as the hours slipped by and the darkness
deepened. Once again the strange flying machine came over, dropping a huge
white light that burned like the sun, turning the dark, empty night to day, but
I had seen it before. That was not the power.
The
moon went out; the mother sea was quiet, as though she knew what I should have
guessed. Still I waited, stiff and cold, watching, straining, fearful that I might miss the sacred test of that which God
had given the Americans.
And then it came. And I
saw.
They
say they found me the next day, still in my sturdy moku, but high and dry atop the little island. The island was bare, stripped
by the power that sent the wave that swept me ashore.
They
carried me to this ship, and never have they stopped their watching and working
over me. They mention "practically ground zero" over and over, and
"miracle," a word I know from the missionary. A word that makes me tremble for what is yet to come. I am blind. My hair is
gone; my body is like the octopus, boneless. My tongue is shriveled and
useless. I bleed, though I am not cut. I am on fire, but I cannot drink.
For I saw.
The mighty light that was without color,
without sound. The swelling brilliance, shining in my bones, burning in my brain.
The brightness deep within my soul, shining, glowing,
searing my heart with dazzling flame. I turned my back and yet it grew,
shining through
my body, brighter,
brighter, unbearable streaming light.
It was then I knew the full extent of my sin.
I remembered, and I knew. This was not the
power. Never would He give to man a consuming glory such as this. Shining in
His awful majesty, He had
come to watch them test His gift, and I, poor, foolish, curious sinner, / had dared to look at God.
IP!
|
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