Sinister Barrier (20 page)

“I see,” said Veitch, slowly and doubtfully.

“Every single thing any of you are about to do you’re to describe in full detail before you try it. You’ll send it through all available channels, the mikes, the teletype, the radios. The scanners will then watch you do it. Distant observers will watch results. If you suffer, we’ll know exactly why you suffered.”

Veitch offered no remark, and Graham went on, “If you succeed in smearing a luminosity, the technical details of how you accomplished the feat will be known fully and accurately to a large number of people spread over a large area. We’ll know the sort of equipment required to repeat the blow, we’ll rush it out in quantities, and nothing in heaven, earth or hell will stop us.” He studied them steadily. “On your way—and best of luck!”

He turned to Wohl. “Ask Laurie to choose his seven, and bring them in here.”

“I didn’t like the little runt, the one staring over Veitch’s shoulder,” remarked Wohl, pausing by the door. “His eyes had hoodlum’s heebies.”

“And what may those be?”

“A fixed, animal glare. Didn’t you notice him? Go have a look through the police art gallery—you’ll find dozens with the heebies, usually deranged or hopped-up killers.” Wohl looked expectantly at the other. “Not all of them have it, but most do. It depends on the state of their minds at the time they were photographed.”

“Yes,” agreed Graham, thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I’ve noticed it in studies of some of those oldtime gangsters: Dillinger, Nelson, the Barrow boys, Louie the Lep, and others. Who knows that they weren’t sorry instruments of unseen drinkers, human swizzle-sticks used to stir up more emotion—when there weren’t enough honeymooners around.”

“By cripes!” said Wohl. “Do you suggest that every bridal room is somebody else’s soda-fountain?”

“Not every one. Of course not! But some—some!”

“I’d be in a living hell if I had your mind. Why don’t you go hang yourself sometime?”

“We are in a living hell, and you know how many cracked up when they discovered it.” He made an impatient gesture. “Veitch won’t be out of the building yet. Go catch him, Art, and put him wise.” He went toward the door. “I’ll call Laurie myself.”

His frown was still serious, worried, when he got the next group of experts, conducted them to the room.

Chapter 13

THE FARADAY ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT Company’s laboratory claimed to be the biggest on the American continent; its size suggested the building of airships rather than the evolving of more efficient iconoscopes, tubes, and stereo-screens.

A battery of enormous Diesel-electrics occupied one end of the hangarlike shed. Mighty transformers reared alongside them; the main switchboard was plenty large enough to serve the chief distributing station of a great city.

Tall, complex tubes of every conceivable type were ranged along one wall, some half finished, many completed, but not yet tested. Queer frames formed of bars, rods and tubular loops—experimental models of ultra-short wave beam antenna—were propped against the opposite wall.

No production lines ran through this great hangar; it was the company’s playground for the most imaginative of its gadgeteers. A veritable litter of scanners, photo-sensitive cells, partly assembled stereo-screens, radio components, wire golliwogs and schematic diagrams marred with doodles lay scattered over tables the size of rooms.

Faraday’s thought nothing of pouring a million dollars a year into the wackier channels of research. When the war began, who’d been about to market six-color stereoscopic television-de-luxe. Faraday!

Duncan Laurie moodily weighed up the technical junkpile at the disposal of his little band, and said to Graham, “Plane polarization ought not to be overlooked. It should be tried in case Farmiloe was slightly off the mark.”

“It’s being considered,” Graham assured him. “We are letting no chances slide, no matter how remote they seem. Why, we’ve got one crowd out west investigating a report that the Vitons duck around rainbows, like men portaging past rapids.”

“Ye gods!” exclaimed Laurie.

“All the work is properly co-ordinated. Your gang is to concentrate on hyperbolic polarization.”

“Okay.” Laurie pulled meditatively at one ear. “These luminosities seem to reflect over a wave-band running from about three million Angstrom units up to four or five. They’re damnably difficult to analyse spectroscopically: we can’t line an instrument on one long enough to get anywhere. But it’s obvious that they’re energy in compact and balanced form, and are inertialess.”

“Are fish inertialess?” asked Graham.

“Fish?” Laurie was frankly puzzled.

Graham pointed to an overhead skylight. “We’ve got to forget our conditioning and try looking at things from a novel angle. Up there is the atmospheric ocean which may be infinitely more tangible to the Vitons than it is to us. It’s full of blue, shining fish swimming around in their natural habitat, swimming by some propulsive means not given to us creatures crawling around on the bottom.”

“But energy—”

“Ordinary light’s a form of energy, and has weight,” Graham went on. He heard the rattle of the police teletype as he talked. “Being made of prime forces—wavicles or whatnot—I think these Vitons have a sort of substance, though they’re not matter as matter is generally understood. We’re faced with a fourth and unfamiliar form of matter, a force-form. They have weight, even though it may be minute from our viewpoint. They have inertia, and have to expend energy to overcome it. That’s why they suck us like so many lollipops—to renew their tissues.” He smiled at Laurie. “Only my own opinions, mind you.”

“Possibly you’re right,” acknowledged Laurie. He favored the skylight with a look of extreme distaste.

“Now,” Graham continued, “reports we’ve collected since we discovered the shoo-fly effects of short-wave therapy cabinets show that the luminosities are susceptible to a radio-band stretching from two centimeters to about one and a half meters. They don’t die. They just skedaddle as if stung.”

“My guess is that those impulses hamper the whirl of their surface electrons,” Laurie opined. “But they don’t penetrate.”

“Quite! And penetration’s what we’ve got to achieve, not sometime next year, or next month, or next week, but within a few hours! We’ve chopped at Viton timber and have been smacked in the eye by the splinters. With luck, we’re going to bore into their hungry guts by means of polarization. Either that, or we can start mooing, for we revert to what we’ve always been—just a herd of goddam cows!” He looked squarely at Laurie. “You’ve got fifty hours. Start at two centimeters and work up.”

“We’ll do it!” swore Laurie. He gave sharp orders to his band. The tiny group—dwarfed by the hugeness of the place—bustled into activity.

To one side, the teleprinter operator transmitted information as Laurie recited his intentions. Silent but super-sensitive microphones also picked up his voice, carried it away in a dozen directions and to varying distances. Scanners fixed to the steel roof trusses recorded the scene from above.

With Wohl at his side, Graham hurried toward the door, and as he reached it the scanners picked up and transmitted a hideous incident that plunged dramatically into the screens of faraway receivers.

All the lights went out simultaneously, the switchboard blew a shower of hot, copper-smelling sparks, and a blaze of vampire blue swelled through an open hopper in the north wall. Elusive gleams of blue reflected the invading Viton from the polished surfaces of jumbled apparatus, shifted and flickered as the apparition arched forward and glided down to floor level.

A human face, fearfully distorted, made leprous by the ghastly illumination, sweated directly in the luminosity’s path—a homoburger waiting the bite! Hysterical gabbling poured from the face’s twitching lips, gabbling that ended in a long hoarse sigh.

Helpless feet dragged on the floor immediately below the glowing devil, scuffled loosely around, rapped on table legs. The brilliant orb bobbed up and down, a limp form dangling beneath it. It made a couple of violent jerks, as if forcing energy-milk from reluctant udders. Glass toppled from an adjacent table, hit the floor, and bounced around in horrible imitation of the bobbing globe.

Somebody began noisily to vomit as red flame lanced vividly from the laboratory’s west side. Dull, purplish spots appeared momentarily on the invader’s scintillating surface. More flame; the sharp, hard crack of the heavy weapon being magnified to deafening proportions.

The luminosity dropped its burden as if discarding an old and empty sack. Vengefully, it shot westward, making a meteoric curve straight into the opposing stream of fire. A voice screamed a terrified obscenity, choked, was silent. The Viton made five savage jerks of guzzlement against the wall.

Swiftness of its departure was breathtaking. Blue whizzed back to the hopper, shone within its open frame, and then was outside. It shrank toward the cloud-wrapped sky. Joe, returning from a bender.

Feet stumbled, voices sounded loudly and querulously in the darkness of a place receiving poor illumination from outside. An unseen hand was quick to close the hopper, making the gloom still deeper. Graham swung wide the door, permitting entry of the afternoon’s light.

Away in the farther corner, somebody ran a pencil beam over the switchboard and fuse-boxes, worked at them with fingers that trembled uncontrollably.

Power suddenly poured through a multitude of overhead bulbs. Laurie ran down the center aisle, kneeled beside an eye-rolling, arm-jerking form. Sensing Graham at his side, he glanced up at the investigator, his eyes straining in a face like marble.

“He’s batty,” observed Graham, in cold, matter of fact tones. The prone man gibbered horribly, clutched Laurie’s hand, moped and mowed. “He gave away nothing. He went nuts as it got him.”

“God, this is awful!” breathed Laurie.

“We’ll get him away.” He looked at the thin ring of fearful onlookers. One of them still was clutching a crucifix. “Back on the job, you men. Don’t let this get you.” They dispersed, slowly, dazedly. He crossed to the hangar’s west side where Wohl was bending over another limp shape.

“Dead as the dodo,” announced Wohl, unemotionally.

Stooping, Graham extracted a big police positive from the teletype operator’s dead fingers. Placing the weapon on a table, he found a small mirror, reflected light into staring optics. It might have been only his imagination, but he thought he saw that subtle something which is life fade gradually from those upturned eyes.

After searching the victim’s form, he straightened, said, “Not a mark! His heart was stopped!”

A siren wailed along the road outside, died away dismally at the open door. Four police officers entered accompanied by one man in plain clothes. Quietly, without comment, they took out the uniformed corpse, came back for the fallen scientist. He was mouthing noiselessly as they bore him away.

Three of the officers got into the car, drove off. The fourth took his seat at the teletype. The man in plain clothes went up to Laurie.

“I’m Ferguson, the replacement.”

Laurie stood like one stupified, his gaze wandering over his companions. Nervously, he tugged at one ear while his face asked his unspoken question.

“Organization,” explained Graham. His gesture was a comprehensive sweep indicating the microphones and scanners. “Already your losses have been made good. Go ahead with your task, and let’s have some speed—we’ve got to move quicker than death!”

Dashing out, Graham clambered into a gyrocar, Wohl taking the wheel. He said, “Bet my own speedster is now a wreck somewhere out west.”

“Maybe.” Wohl tooled out to the middle of the concrete. “Where to?”

“Yonkers. There’s an underground laboratory out there. Steve Koenig’s in charge.” Noting Wohl’s curiosity, he added, “There are only two groups in this neighborhood. I’m not revealing where the others are, even to you.”

“Meaning I might be grabbed and tapped for information?” Wohl leered at the sky, and pulled a face. “Where do we stand if the victim is
you?
Or do we then sit down and take it?”

“We still stand. Nobody’s under the delusion that I’m invincible. There are plenty of other groups besides the sixty-four boys I claimed. I’ve had nothing whatever to do with the others, and know nothing about them. People in Washington and other places have placed them where they’ll do the most good. Moreover, nobody in this country knows where South American and European experts are located, and they know nothing of ours.”

“This,” decided Wohl, “certainly is one time when it’s folly to be wise.”

“I’ll say!” Graham’s expression was thoughtful. “Things have been arranged in such a way that the same applies to me as to everyone else—what I don’t know I can’t tell.”

They swung right, the dynamo whirling powerfully. In a smooth rush, they swept around a huge crater in the road. Above the enormous hole was a quarter-mile gap in the shattered skyway, a break from the ragged ends of which stubby lengths of twisted, rusting girders stuck.

“Some banger!” Wohl let his streamlined machine plummet along in top gear. He covered two miles in a fraction over a minute, slowed at an intersection, turned left.

At that point the sky flashed into several times its normal brilliance, for a split second cast sharp, clear-cut shadows across the street. Then the phenomenon was gone. Wohl braked the car to a stop, waited expectantly. Seconds later, the ground quivered. The weakened, unsupported shell of a nearby building collapsed into the road with an appalling roar, filling it with rubble from side to side. Several Vitons suspended in the sky began to zoom to the west.

“That was atomic,” declared Graham. “Some miles out. Probably a rocket.”

“If we’d been half an hour ahead—” Wohl left his sentence unfinished.

“We weren’t, and that’s that. No use going on now. Turn her round, Art. I’ll try the Battery.”

They raced downtown, away from the distant and giant mushroom which was crackling with death. Bulleting along, they passed Bank of Manhattan.

Graham remarked, “Seems years since I worked from that office.” He was silent a moment, then added sharply, “Pull up on this corner, Art.”