Sinister Barrier (15 page)

“Those are what?”

“Firstly, that there
is
a lethal weapon waiting to be discovered by us—if we’ve the ability to find it. The Vitons are vulnerable!” He paused, then said carefully, “Secondly, if their study of McAndrew’s mind satisfies them that we have the talent to find and develop this weapon, they’ll take every possible action to meet the threat—and damn quick! Hell is going to pop!”

“As if it isn’t popping already!” remarked Leamington. He waved an all-embracing hand. “Can you conceive anything more desperate than our present situation?”

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” Graham riposted. “We
know
what’s popping now. We don’t know what they’ll start next.”

“If they think up any new hellers,” said Leamington, “by God, they’ll about finish us!”

Graham made no reply. He was buried in thought, deep, worried thought. One, now dead, had credited him with extra-sensory perception. Maybe it was that, or perhaps it was second sight—but he knew that a bigger and better hell was on the way.

Darkness, deep, dismal darkness such as can swathe only a city once lurid with light. Apart from firefly flashes of gyrocars hurtling with masked headlamps through New York’s glassless and battered canyons, there was nothing but that heavy, depressing, all-pervading gloom.

Here and there circles of wooden posts coated with phosphorescent paint gleamed greenly in the night and warned drivers of immense pits left by blasting rockets. That sour stench of war was stronger than ever, the smell of upheaved earth and fractured mains, broken bricks and torn bodies.

On uptown Sixth a small red torch waved to and fro in the darkness, causing Graham to brake his speedster. It slowed, stopped, and he got out.

“What’s the idea?”

A young officer emerged from concealing blackness. “Sorry, mister, your machine’s wanted.” He remained silent while Graham revealed his identity, then declared, “I can’t help it, Mr. Graham. My orders are to commandeer every vehicle attempting to pass this point.”

“All right, I will not argue the matter.” Reaching inside the gyrocar, Graham hauled out his heavy topcoat, writhed into it. “I’ll walk.”

“I’m really sorry,” the officer assured. “There’s serious trouble out west and we need every machine on which we can lay our hands.” He turned to two of his olive-drab command, barely visible in the dark. “Rush this one to the depot.” Then, as the pair clambered in, he pressed the button of his red-lensed torch, signalled another approaching gyrocar to stop.

Graham paced hurriedly along the road. There were tottering walls at his side, some temporarily shored with timber braces. On the other side gaunt skeletons of what once had been great business blocks stood in awful solitude.

An anti-aircraft battery occupied the square at the end. He passed it in silence, noting the aura of tension emanating from the quiet, steel-helmeted figures surrounding the sleek, uplifted muzzles. A duty of appalling futility was theirs; the guns, the cunning proximity fuses, the more cunning predictors couldn’t beat to the draw a rocket travelling far ahead of its own sound. The most they could hope for was an occasional robot-bomb, or a crazy Asian with ambitions of honorable suicide. Nothing else.

Beyond the square, precariously poised on a shattered roof, was a combined listening-post and radar unit. The quadruple trumpets of the former angled uselessly toward the westward horizon; the hemispherical antenna of the latter rotated dutifully but to little effect. Although he could not see them, he knew that somewhere between the roof-post and the guns were more tensed, silent figures waiting by the Sperry predictor—waiting for that banshee wail announcing the approach of something slow enough to detect and, perhaps, bring down.

A bright pink aurora sparkled for one second over the Palisades, and the bellow of the explosion drifted in eons later. Whatever caused it sent a tidal wave racing up the Hudson. Another sparkle came a moment later, higher up the Jersey side of the river, near Haverstraw. Then silence filled the sky.

But the road was not silent. From the depths immediately beneath came a strange, persistent sound: the sound of a mighty gnawing. That subterranean
scrunch, scrunch, scrunch
was audible all the way along, and accompanied the stealthy walker for a mile.

There, far down below the very foundations of the city, great jaws of beryllium steel were guzzling the bedrock. Mechanical moles were chewing through the substrata, forming the arteries of a new and safer city beyond reach of rockets and bombs.

“When all that’s finished,” mused Graham, whimsically “the former subway will be the El!”

Turning left, he saw a blotch of solid darkness in the less material dark. The dim form was on the opposite side of the road, hurrying nearer on steel-shod heels that clanked noisily.

They were almost level, and about to pass, when from a swollen cloud hidden in the general blackness there plunged a ball of cold blue light. Its sudden, ferocious onslaught was irresistible. The vaguely seen human figure sensed imminent peril, whirled around, gave vent to a blood-freezing shriek that ended in a gasp.

While Graham clung close to the deeper shadows, his hard eyes registering the incredibly swift attack, the luminosity bobbed around its victim, illuminating him in pale, sickly light. He saw the fine, brilliant streamers of its tentacles insert themselves in the body. The thing burped a couple of rings like immaterial halos that spread outward and faded away. The next moment, the shining devil soared, bearing the body aloft.

Another was similarly snatched from the vacant lot two hundred yards farther along the road. Passing a skeletal rooming house, Graham saw hunter and hunted crossing the open area. Lit by the former’s ghostly glow, the latter’s fantastically elongated shadow fled ahead of him.

The prey had all the frantic motion of one fleeing from a product of fundamental hell. His feet hit earth in great, clumping strides, while queer, distorted words jerked from his fear-smitten larynx.

Iridescent blue closed upon him and formed a satanic nimbus behind his head. The blue swelled, engulfed both the runner and his final, despairing scream. The Viton spewed two rings before it took the body skyward.

A third and a fourth were picked from Drexler Avenue. They saw the downward swoop of blue. One ran. The other fell on his knees, bent in dreadful obeisance, covered the nape of his neck with his hands. The runner bellowed hoarsely as he ran, his belly heaving, his bladder out of control, his terror-filled tones a veritable paean of the damned. The kneeler remained kneeling, as if before his personal joss. The joss was as impartial as any other god. They were taken simultaneously, sobbed together, soared together, true believer and heretic alike, both the sinner and the saved. The Vitons displayed no preferences, showed no favors. They dished out death as impartially as munitions-makers or meningococci.

Moisture was lavish on Graham’s forehead as he stole up the driveway, passed through the doors of the Samaritan Hospital. He wiped it off before seeing Harmony, decided he would say nothing of these tragedies.

She was as cool and collected as ever, and her richly black eyes surveyed him with what he felt to be a sort of soothing serenity. Nevertheless, they saw into him deeply.

“What has happened?” she asked.

“Happened? What d’you mean?”

“You look bothered. And you’ve just wiped your forehead.”

Pulling out a handkerchief, he mopped it again, said, “How did you know that?”

“It was smeary.” The eyes showed alarm. “Were they after you again?”

“No, not me.”

“Someone else?”

“What’s this?” he demanded. “A quiz?”

“Well, you looked off-balance for once,” she defended.

“I’m always off-balance when talking to you.” He drove other, deadlier matters out of his thoughts and gave her the springtime look. “I’ll be normal when I’ve got used to you, when I’ve seen more of you.”

“Meaning what?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I assure you I’ve not the remotest notion of what you’re trying to suggest,” she said, coldly.

“A date,” he told her.

“A date!” Her eyes supplicated the ceiling. “In the midst of all this, he comes seeking dates.” She sat down behind her desk, picked up her pen. “You must be stark, staring mad. Good day, Mr. Graham.”

“It’s night-time, not day,” he reminded. He emitted an exaggerated sigh. “A night for romance.”

She sniffed loudly as she commenced writing.

“All right,” he gave in. “I know when I’m given the brush-off. I get used to it these days. Let’s change the subject. What d’you know?”

She put down the pen. “I was waiting for you to return to your senses. I’ve been wanting to see you the last few hours.”

“Have you, begad!” He stood up delightedly.

“Don’t be conceited!” She waved him down. “This is about something serious.”

“Oh, lordie, aren’t I something serious?” he asked the room.

“I had Professor Farmiloe around to tea.”

“What’s he got that I haven’t?”

“Manners!” she snapped.

He winced, subsided.

“He’s an old dear. Do you know him?”

“A bit—though I don’t want to now.” He put on an exaggerated expression of jealousy and contempt. “Aged party with a white goatee, isn’t he? I believe he’s Fordham’s expert on something or other. Probably takes care of their tropical butterflies.”

“He was my godfather.” She mentioned this fact as if it explained everything. “He’s some kind of a physicist.”

“Bill,” he prompted.

She took no notice.

“I think he’s—”

“Bill,” he insisted.

“Oh, all right,” she said, impatiently. “Bill, if it pleases you.” She tried to keep her face straight, but he caught the underlying hint of a smile and gained considerable satisfaction therefrom. “Bill, I think he’s got an idea of some sort. It bothers me. Every time somebody gets an idea, he dies.”

“Not necessarily. We don’t know how many are still living who’ve been nursing ideas for months. Besides, I’m alive.”

“You’re alive because you appear to have only one idea,” she observed, tartly. Her legs went under her chair.

“How could you say that?” He registered his shock.

“For heavens sake, will you let me keep to the subject on which I wish to talk to you?”

“Okay.” He gave her an annoying grin. “What makes you think old Farmiloe is afflicted with a notion?”

“I was talking to him about the luminosities. I wanted him to explain why it’s so difficult to find a weapon against them.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said that we hadn’t yet learned how to handle forces as familiarly as substances, that we’d advanced sufficiently to discover the Vitons but not enough to develop a means of removing them.” Her fine eyes appraised him as she went on. “He said that we could throw energy in all sorts of forms at a Viton, and if nothing happened we just had no way of discovering why nothing had happened. We can’t even capture and hold a Viton to find out whether it repels energy or absorbs it and re-radiates it. We can’t grab one to discover what it’s made of.”

“We know they absorb
some
energy,” Graham pointed out. “They absorb nervous currents, drinking them like thirsty horses. They absorb radar pulses—radar can’t get a blip out of a Viton. As for the mystery of their composition, well, old Farmiloe’s right. We’ve no idea and no way of getting an idea. That’s the hell of it.”

“Professor Farmiloe says it’s his personal opinion that these luminosities have some sort of electro-dynamic field, that they can modify it at will, that they can bend most forms of energy around them, absorbing only those that are their natural food.” Revulsion suffused her features. “Such as those nervous currents you mentioned.”

“And we can’t reproduce those with any known apparatus,” Graham commented. “If we could, we might be able to stuff them until they burst.”

Her smile crept back. “I happened to remark that I’d like to have a magic spoon and stir them up like so many blue puddings.” Her slender fingers curled around an imaginary spoon, stirred in vigorous ellipses. “For some weird reason, he seemed fascinated when I made this demonstration. He copied me, waving his finger round and round as if it was some new sort of game. It was only my foolishness—but why should he be equally foolish? He knows a lot more about energy-problems than I can hope to learn.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me. D’you think he’s in his second childhood?”

“Most decidedly not.”

“Then I don’t get it.” Graham made a defeated motion.

“Not giving any indication of what was on his mind, he looked slightly dazed, said he’d better be going,” she continued. “Then he wandered out in that preoccupied manner of his. As he went, he remarked that he’d try to find me that spoon. I know that he really meant something by that; he was not reassuring me with idle words—
he meant something!”
Her smoothly curved brows rose in query. “He meant—what?”

“Nutty!” decided Graham. He made a stirring motion with an invisible spoon. “It’s nutty—like everything else has been since this crazy affair began. Probably Farmiloe is stupified by learning. He’ll go home and try to develop a haywire egg-beater, and finish up playing with it while in Fawcett’s care. Fawcett’s got dozens like that.”

“You wouldn’t make such remarks if you knew the professor as well as I do,” she retorted, sharply. “He’s the last person who’d become unbalanced. I’d like you to go and see him. He may have something worth getting.” She leaned forward. “Or would you rather arrive too late, as usual?”

He winced, said, “Okay, okay, don’t hit me when I’m down. I’ll go see him right away.”

“That’s being sensible,” she approved. Her eyes changed expression as she watched him stand up and reach for his hat. “Before you go, aren’t you going to tell me what has got you worried?”

“Worried?” He turned around slowly. “That’s a laugh! Ha-ha! Fancy, me, worried!”

“You don’t deceive me. All that date-making small-talk of yours didn’t fool me, either. I could see you were bothered the moment you came in. You looked ripe for murder.” Her hands came together. “Bill, what is it?—something new?—something worse?”