Sinister Barrier (19 page)

“What—nude?”

“Tut!” Wohl was shocked. His foot nudged a bundle on the floor. “No, in these. The crime wave’s awful when even police lieutenants snitch hospital blankets.” Standing up, he stretched his arms sidewise, revolved slowly, like a gown model. “How d’you like the suit?”

“Holy smoke, it’s one of mine!”

“Sure! I found it in your wardrobe. Bit saggy under the arms, and tight around the fanny, but it’ll do.”

“Heck of a figure you must have. Too little in front and too much behind,” commented Graham. His smile faded as he switched expressions and became serious. He shoved Wohl back into his chair. “Listen, Art. Time’s short. I’ve just got back from Washington, and what I heard there is going to keep me on the jump like a flea on a hot stove. The situation is tougher than I’d imagined.” He recounted the march of events since he’d left Wohl in the hospital at Stamford. “So I asked Keithley, and here it is.” He handed over a plain, iridium-lined ring. “You’ve been fired by the police and conscripted by the Intelligence, whether you like it or not. You’re now my opposite number,”

“So be it.” Wohl’s studied nonchalance failed to conceal his delight. “How the devil do the authorities manage always to supply rings the correct size?”

“Forget it—we’ve bigger puzzles to solve.” He gave Wohl the clipping he’d taken from Farmiloe’s copy of the
Sun.
“We’re organizing fast. We’ve got until Monday evening, by which time it must be conquest or curtains! It doesn’t matter whether we starve or die so long as we produce by that deadline.” He pointed to the clipping. “That’s Farmiloe’s dying scrawl. That’s our only clew.”

“You’re certain that it’s a clew?”

“Nope! I’m certain of nothing in this precarious existence. But I’ve a hunch that it is a genuine pointer to something worth knowing—something that cost Farmiloe his life!”

Staring long and hard at the bear posing inanely before an iceberg, Wohl said, “Have you had a refrigerator picked to bits?”

“Sangster dumped one on the university and they took it apart. They went down to the last bolt, screw and piece of wire. There was nothing left for them to do but lick the enamel off the plates.”

“It told them nothing?”

“Not a thing. Cold might kill luminosities by slowing down their vibrations, but how’re we going to apply it? There’s no such thing as a beam of pure cold, nor any likelihood of developing one—it’s a theoretical absurdity.” Graham glanced anxiously at his watch. “Does that scrawl suggest anything to you?”

“Br-r-r!” replied Wohl, hugging himself.

“Don’t act the fool, Art! There’s no time for horsing around.”

“I always feel the cold,” Wohl apologized. He scowled at the taunting advertisement. “I don’t like that animile’s complacent smirk. It knows we’re stuck, and it doesn’t care.” He returned the clipping to Graham. “All it tells me is what I knew long ago, namely, that you have an astonishing aptitude for digging up the screwiest leads.”

“Don’t remind me of it!” Graham’s voice was an annoyed growl. He transfixed the clipping with an angry finger. “A bear! We’ve got something here we think is a clew. Maybe it’s the masterkey of our puzzle. Maybe it’s salvation in our time if only we can look at it the right way. And it’s nothing more than a long, mercenary, self-satisfied looking and probably flea-bitten bear!”

“Yes,” Wohl joined in, for lack of anything better to contribute. “A gangling, cockeyed, stinking bear! A lousy polar bear!”

“If only I’d been quicker after Farmiloe, or had met him on his way—” Graham stopped in mid-sentence. A thoroughly startled look sprang into his features. In a voice hushed with sheer surprise, he said, “Hey, you called it a
polar
bear!”

“Sure I did! It’s not a giraffe, unless I’m blind.”

“A polar bear!” yelled Graham, changing tone with sudden violence that brought Wohl upright. “Polarization! That’s it—polarization!” He stirred his finger vigorously in the air. “Circular or elliptical polarization. Hell!—why didn’t I see it before? A child ought to have seen it. I’m too dumb to live!”

“Eh?” said Wohl, his mouth agape,

“Polarization, a million dollars to a doughnut!” Graham shouted. His face was deep purple with excitement. It would have looked red to ordinary sight. Grabbing two hats, he slammed one on the startled Wohl’s head, where it stuck rakishly. “Out! We’re getting out hell-for-leather! We’re telling the world before it’s too late! Out!”

They fled through the door without bothering to close it behind them. Warily, their eyes watched the heights as they hammered along the sidewalk. Blue dots were glowing in the sky, but none swung low.

“Down here!” puffed Graham. He ducked into a concrete maw whose throat lead to the newer and lower city. Together they went full tilt down the ultra-rapid escalators, hit the levitator banks at first level, descended another four hundred feet.

They were inhaling heavily as they jumped from their disks, found themselves at the junction of six recently made tunnels. Dull rumbles and raucous grinding noises of steadily boring mammoths still spouted from the two newest holes.

Hydrants, telephone booths, public televisors and even a small cigar store already stood in this subterranean area dug only within the last few weeks. Engineers, overseers, surveyors, and laborers were scurrying about laden with tools, materials, instruments and portable lamps. Occasionally, an electric trolley, heavily laden, whirred out of one tunnel and into another. Ominously, workers were fitting radioactive gas detectors to the levitator tubes and the air-conditioning vents.

“Vitons rarely find their way down here,” Graham observed. “We ought to be able to phone in comparative safety. Take the booth next to mine, Art. Phone every scientific plant, depot and individual you can find listed in the directory. Tell them the secret may be polarization of some sort, probably elliptical. Don’t let them argue with you. Tell them to spread it around where they think it’ll do the most good—then ring off.”

“Right!” Wohl stepped into his booth.

“How long had you been waiting when I arrived?”

“About fifteen minutes.” Snatching the directory, Wohl leafed it to page one. “I’d finished dressing only a couple of minutes when you arrived like a guy shot out of a cannon.”

Taking the adjoining booth, Graham dialled, got his number. As usual, the visor was out of order, but he recognized the voice at the other end. “Try polarization, Harriman,” he said, quickly. “Maybe it’s elliptical. Toss it around as fast as you know how—if you want to live!” He disconnected, giving Harriman no chance to comment.

Seven more calls he made, repeating his suggestion with economy of words. Then he rang Stamford Center Hospital, asked what time Wohl had left. The reply made him sigh with relief. The former police officer could not have been snatched and perverted—his time was fully explained.

He had not really suspected the other of being a dupe, particularly since Wohl had shown himself willing to help spread the very information which the enemy was desperately anxious to suppress. But he could not forget Sangster’s glum statement that “others display the very essence of cunning.” In addition, there was that persistent and sometimes frightening feeling of being the especial object of widespread search. The enemy, he sensed, knew of him—their problem was to find him.

Shrugging, he dialled again, rattled hurriedly through his information, and heard the other say, “Your buddy Wohl’s on our spare line right now. He’s giving us the same stuff.”

“It doesn’t matter so long as you’ve got it,” Graham snapped. “Pass it along to as many as you can.”

An hour later, he left his booth, opened Wohl’s door. “Chuck it, Art. I reckon we’ve thrown it too far to be stopped.”

“I’d got down to the letter P,” sighed Wohl. “A gezeeber named Penny was the next.” His sigh was deeper, more regretful. “I wanted to ask him if he could spare a dime.”

“Never mind the wit.” Graham’s features registered anxiety as he noted the hands on the huge turret clock over the booths. “Time’s flying quicker than zip, and I’ve got to meet those—”

A faraway roar interrupted him. Ground trembled and shuddered in quick, tormented pulsations, and a tremendous blast of warm, odorous air swept through the area. Things plunged down the transparent levitator shafts, crashed noisily at bottom. Fine powder trickled from the roof. There was the sound of distant shouting.

The uproar spread, came nearer. Shouting, bawling men raced from the tunnels, made a clamorous, gesticulating crowd that packed the subterranean junction. A gargantuan drummer thumped the ground overhead, and more powder streamed down. The drumming ceased; the crowd milled and cursed.

Somebody drove his way through the mob, entered a phone booth, emerged after a minute. He silenced the others by sheer superiority of lung power, gained a hearing. His stentorian tones bounded and rebounded around the junction, fled in dismal wails along the tunnels.

“The exit’s blocked! The phone cable is intact, and those on the surface say there’s ten thousand tons choking the shaft. Dupes did it!” The crowd howled, flourished fists, looked around for rope and a few victims. “It’s all right, boys,” roared the speaker. “The cops got ’em! They were dropped on the run.” His authoritative eyes roamed over the mass of weary faces. “Get back to Number Four—we’ve the shortest dig for a bust-through there.”

Muttering among themselves, scowling as they went, the workers poured into a tunnel. Before the last one had been swallowed by its gloomy arch, distant thumps and rumbles burst forth with doubled fury. The beryllium-steel jaws resumed their gnawing.

Catching the speaker as he was about to follow, Graham identified himself, asked, “How long?”

“It’ll be quickest through Number Four tunnel,” replied the other. “There’s about ninety feet of solid rock between us and another gang working to meet us. We’re joining systems through this hole, and I reckon we can’t make it in under three hours.”

“Three hours!” Graham had another look at the turret clock and groaned.

Ten of his precious eighty already had drifted away, leaving behind nothing but a shrewd guess yet to be confirmed experimentally. Three more were to be wasted in waiting—waiting for release from earthly depths which, at least, were safer than the perilous surface. Once again a Viton strike had been well-timed… or yet again the devil had looked after his own!

It was some small compensation to find that the adjoining system had its exit on West Fourteenth, for it was in the basement of the Martin Building that Graham had arranged to meet the governmental experts along with several others.

Sixty-four of them were fidgeting apprehensively in this deep hideout immediately below the spot where Professor Mayo’s crushed body had started the whole series of ghastly events. It was fitting, Graham thought, that the stain of this tragedy should mark the scene of humanity’s last boom-or-bust conference.

“You’ve been tipped about polarization?” he asked. They nodded. One stood up, intending to offer an opinion. Graham waved him down. “No discussions at the moment, gentlemen.”

His eagle eyes weighed them individually as he went on, “In spite of their immensely superior powers, we’ve outwitted our adversaries twice. We’ve done it with this polarization hint of Farmiloe’s, and we did it when first we broadcast news of the enemy’s existence. We beat them despite everything they could bring against us. On both those occasions, we succeeded by taking advantage of the Vitons’ chief weakness—that they can’t be everywhere at once. We’re going to use the same tactics again.”

“How?” demanded a voice.

“I’m not telling you that in full detail. There may be some among you who are not to be trusted!” His lean, muscular features maintained their grimness as his eyes carefully went over them again. Uneasily, his listeners shifted in their seats, each casting sidelong, wary glances at his neighbors. Their thoughts were readily apparent: what man can I call man—when no man can I call brother? Graham continued, “You’re going to be divided into eight groups of eight apiece. You’ll be scattered, and no party is going to know the location of any of the other seven. Those who, don’t know, can’t tell!”

More fidgeting, more mutual suspicion. Wohl grinned to himself as he stood at Graham’s side. He was enjoying the situation. If among this crowd of reputed bigbrains were a dozen enforced converts of the Vitons, helpless but supremely crafty spies in the human camp, their identity was completely unknown, and there was no readymade means of detecting them. Any man in this audience might well be sitting between a pair of dreadful proxies.

“I’m taking a group of eight, giving them their instructions in private, and sending them on their way before I deal with the next lot,” informed Graham. He selected Kennedy Veitch, leading ray expert. “You’re in charge of the first group, Mr. Veitch. Please select your seven,”

After Veitch had picked his co-workers, Graham led them to another room, told them hurriedly, “You’re going to the Acme plant, in Philadelphia. When you get there, you’re not merely to carry on with experimentation designed to blot out a few luminosities, for that means—if you happen to be successful—you’ll be promptly eliminated by other, nearby globes, and we’ll be left wondering why in hell you died. We’re sick of wanting to know why guys have died!”

“I don’t see how immediate retaliation can be prevented,” opined Veitch, his face pale, but his lips firm.

“It cannot—just yet.” Graham minced no words, didn’t care whether he sounded brutal or not. “You and your men may be blasted to blazes—
but
we’re going to know exactly what you’ve been doing right up to the moment of the blast. You may be blown to hades, and we may be impotent to prevent it—but we’ll know
why
you’ve been blown!”

“Ah!” breathed Veitch. His group crowded around him, wide-eyed, possessed of that curious silence of men facing the zero hour.

“You’ll have microphones distributed all over your laboratory and they’ll be linked through the city’s telephone system. You’ll also be connected with the police teletype system, and you’ll have a police operator in attendance. The army signals corps will provide you with two boys with walkie-talkie sets. There will be fine-definition scanners tied to far-off television receivers. Adjacent buildings will hold observers who’ll watch your laboratory continually.”