The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 32
"You've been tipped about polarization?" he asked. They nodded. One stood up, intending to offer an opinion. Graham waved him down. "No discussion at the moment, gentlemen."
His eagle eyes studied them individually as he went on: "We've outwitted our adversaries twice. We've done it with this tip of Farmiloe's, and we did it when we broadcast news of the enemy's existence. On both occasions, we succeeded by taking advantage of our antagonists' only weakness—that they simply can't be everywhere at once. We're going to use the same tactics again."
"How?" put in a voice.
"I'm not saying! There may be some among you who are not to be trusted." His lean, muscular features maintained their grimness. Uneasily, his listeners shifted in their seats, each casting wary, sidelong glances at his neighbors. "You're going to be divided into eight parties of eight apiece. No party is going to know the location 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 were a dozen enforced converts of the Vitons, helpless but cunning spies in the human camp, their identity was completely unknown. Any man might be sitting between a pair of dreadful proxies.
"I'm taking a group of eight, giving 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."
Leading them to another room, he 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're 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 prompt retaliation can be prevented," opined Veitch, his face pale, but his lips firm.
"It can't—just yet." Graham minced no words, didn't care whether he sounded brutal or not. "You men will be blasted to blazes, perhaps. But we're going to know exactly what you were up to at the moment you went."
"Ah!" breathed Veitch. His group crowded around him, wide-eyed, but saying nothing.
"You'll have microphones in your lab and they'll be linked with every available telephone line. You'll be on the police teletype system, with a police operator in attendance. There will be fine-definition scanners tied to far-away television receivers. Adjacent buildings will hold observers who'll watch your laboratory continually."
"I see," said Veitch slowly.
"Every single thing you're about to do you're to describe in full detail before you try it. You'll send it through the mikes and over the teletype. The scanners will then watch you do it. Distant observers will watch results. If you suffer, we'll know exactly why you suffered."
Veitch made no remark, and Graham went on: "If you succeed in smearing a luminosity, the technical details of how you accomplished it will have passed through half a dozen telephone exchanges and scores of precinct stations. We'll rush out that equipment 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 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. Go see the police art gallery—you'll find hundreds with the heebies!" Wohl looked expectantly at his listener. "Deranged killers always have it."
"They do," agreed Graham thoughtfully. "I've noted it in photographs of old-time gangsters, Dillinger, Nelson, the Barrows, and others. Who knows that they weren't sorry instruments of unseen drinkers, thirsting for horror?" He frowned. "Veitch won't be out of the building yet. Go catch him, Art, and put him wise." He stood up. "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 Twelve
THE FARADAY Electrical Equipment Co.'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 television scanners, tubes, and screens.
A battery of enormous Diesel-electrics occupied one end of the hangarlike shed. Mighty transformers reared alongside them; the switchboard looked large enough to be in the chief distributing station of a great city.
Tall, complex tubes, of every conceivable type, were ranged along one wall, some half-finished, some completed but not yet tested. Queer frames formed of bars and rods—experimental models of various directional antenna—were propped against the opposite wall.
A veritable litter of scanners, photosensitive cells, partly assembled screens, and unsuccessful attempts at flickerless stereoscopic presentation, lay scattered over tables the size of small rooms.
The Faraday Co. thought nothing of pouring a million dollars a year into research. It had paid them. When the war commenced, who'd been about to market four-color television deluxe? Faraday's!
Duncan Laurie admiringly weighed up the equipment at the disposal of his little band, and said to Graham: "Plane oughtn't 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 may seem. All the work is properly coordinated. Your gang's to concentrate on hyperbolic polarization."
"All right." Laurie pulled thoughtfully 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 observe scientifically; we can't line an instrument on one long enough to analyze its output. 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. "Up there is the atmospheric ocean. It's full of blue, shining fish swimming around by some means impossible to us creatures crawling 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 forces, I think these Vitons have a sort of substance, though they're not matter as matter is generally understood. They have weight, even though it's negligible. They have inertia, and have to expend energy to overcome it." He smiled at Laurie. "Only my own opinions, mind you!"
"Possibly you're right," acknowledged Laurie.
"Now," continued Graham, "reports we've collected since discovering the effect of short-wave therapy cabinets show that the luminosities are susceptible to a range stretching from two centimeters to two 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."
"Penetration's what we're out to achieve. We've chopped at Viton timber, and have been struck in the eye by splinters. With luck, we're going to bore into them by means of polarization." Graham made the statement with optimistic confidence. "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 teletype flashed its information as Laurie carefully recited his intentions. Silent but supersensitive microphones also picked up his voice, carried it away. Scanners fixed to the steel roof trusses took in 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 onto the screens of faraway receivers.
All the lights went out simultaneously, and a blaze of blue swelled through an open hopper in the north wall. Elusive gleams of blue flashed from jumbled apparatus, flickered and shifted as the apparition arched forward and swept toward the floor.
A human face, fearfully distorted, made leprous by the ghastly illumination, sweated directly in the luminosity's path. Hysterical gabbling poured from the face's twitching lips, gabbling that ended in a loud, hoarse sigh.
Helpless feet dragged on the floor immediately beneath the glowing invader, scuffled around, rapped on table legs. The orb bobbed up and down, a limp form dangling beneath it. Glass toppled from an adjacent table, hit the floor, and bounced in horrible imitation of the bobbing globe.
Red flame lanced vividly from the laboratory's west side, and 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 like somebody dropping an old sack. It shot westward, making a meteoric curve into an opposing spear of fire. A voice screamed a terrified obscenity, choked, and was silent.
Swiftness of departure was breathtaking. Blue whizzed to the hopper, shone within the open frame, and then was outside. It shrank toward the cloud-wrapped sky.
Feet stumbled, voices murmured in the semidarkness of a place receiving poor illumination from outside. Graham swung wide the door, permitting entry of the gloomy afternoon's dull light.
Away in the farther corner, somebody put a pencil beam upon a fuse box, bent over it, working with fingers that trembled uncontrollably.
Power suddenly poured through a multitude of bulbs. Laurie ran down the center aisle, knelt beside an eye-rolling, arm-jerking form. He sensed Graham at his side, looked up at the investigator, his eyes wide in a face like marble.
"He's batty," declared Graham. 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 terrible!" breathed Laurie.
"We'll get him away." Leaving the pair, Graham shouldered through the thin ring of fearful onlookers, joined Wohl at the west side.
"Dead as the dodo," announced Wohl, without emotion.
Graham bent over the body of the teletype operator, extracted the huge Police Positive from limp fingers. He placed the weapon on a table, found a small mirror, directed light into staring eyes. It might have been only his imagination, but he thought he saw that subtle something which is life fade gradually from those fixed optics.
After searching the police operator's form, he straightened up, and said: "Not a mark! His heart was stopped!"
A siren screamed along the road outside, died away with a dismal wail 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 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 relief."
Laurie stood like one stupefied, his gaze wandering over his pale companions. Wearily, he tugged at one ear while his face asked his unspoken question.
"Organization," explained Graham. His gesture was a comprehensive sweep indicating the scanners and microphones. "Already your losses are made good. Get started—we've got to move quicker than death!"
DASHING out, Graham clambered into a police gyrocar, Wohl taking the wheel. He said, "Bet my own speedster's a wreck somewhere out West."
"Maybe." Wohl tooled her out, purred her along. "Where to?"
"Yonkers. There's an underground lab out there. Steve Koenig's in charge." Noting Wohl's curiosity, he added: "There are only two groups in New York. I'm not revealing where others are, not even to you."
"Meaning I might be grabbed and tapped for information?" Wohl glanced at the sky, pulled a face. "Where do we stand if the victim is you? Or do we then sit?"
"We still stand! There are other groups besides those I claimed. I haven't handled them because I want to know nothing about them. Somebody in Washington has placed them. Moreover, we don't know where European experts are located, and they know nothing of ours."
"This," decided Wohl, "is certainly one time when it's folly to be wise!"
"I'll say!" Graham's hard, lean face 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 wide gap in the shattered skyway, a gap from the ragged concrete ends of which stubby lengths of rusting girders stuck like rotting teeth.
"Some shell." Wohl let his long, streamlined machine plummet in top. He slowed at an intersection, turned left.
They bulleted along, passed Bank of Manhattan, Graham remarking casually, "Seems years since I worked from that office." He was suddenly silent, then added in a quiet voice, "Pull up at this corner, Art."
The gyrocar swung into the curb, stopped. Graham twisted around in his seat, stared at the pile of masonry a block behind. Opening the door, he writhed out.
"What's up?" Wohl fiddled with his wheel, glanced impatiently at his friend.
"The twenty-fourth floor," muttered Graham. "Yes, it was the twenty-fourth!" His eyes glittered. "Something blue and shining flashed from the windows on that level as we passed beneath. I caught it with the tail of my eye. The six middle windows in that row belong to Sangster's dump."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I think it was a luminosity!" The investigator's face was like cold granite. "Stick around, Art—I'm going to phone."
WITHOUT waiting for Wohl's reply, he raced into the nearest building, found a phone. This instrument's visor was working all right, for a girl's face bloomed on its tiny screen as his call got through.
He stared anxiously at those familiar features, desperately trying to discern details beyond the scope of the distant scanner.
"Hi, Hetty!" he said.
"Hi!" She smiled mechanically.
"Mr. Sangster there?"
"No. He's been out all afternoon. I expect him back before five thirty." Her voice was dull, lifeless, but her smile grew more insistent, more inviting. "Won't you come along and wait for him, Mr. Graham?"
"Sorry, I can't. I—"
"We haven't seen you for such a long time," she pleaded. "I'm so lonely, so afraid. Come and chat with me awhile."
"Hetty, I can hardly spare the time." He stared fascinatedly at the screen, noting the tiniest movement of her lips, the slightest flicker of her eyes.
"From where are you speaking?" Again that dull, phonographic voice.
He felt his temper rising, and, evading her question, said slowly: "I'll come round, Hetty. Expect me about five."
"That's fine!" Her smile widened, but her eyes held no collaboratory expression. "Be sure to make it."
Disconnecting, he gazed at the screen from which her features had faded. Then he hurried out to the waiting gyrocar,
"They've got Hetty," he told Wohl. "The place is a trap."
"Like the field office was," remarked Wohl. He paled slightly.
"Ten to one my own home's also a trap—both Sangster and Hetty know it well." He felt furious, but the bitterness in his expression died away, to be replaced with steely determination. His fists clenched into hard bunches. "They're creeping nearer and nearer. Art, I'm fed up! I'm going to smack 'em right in the pan—and to hell with 'em!"
"I'm with you, Bill." Lowering his window, Wohl spat halfway across the street, raised the window again. "To the limit. How're we going to smite them?"
"It depends." Climbing into the machine, Graham sat and pondered, his wary eyes watching through the transparent roof for any wandering orbs that might drift within telepathic range. "If the trap is toothed with Vitons, I'm merely talking big, because there's nothing I can do. But if they've left the dirty work to a surrounding bunch of dupes, I'm going in. I'm going to go in, and sock 'em hard, and walk out with Hetty."
"Never mind the I stuff—we!" said Wohl.
"I found a fellow operative when I got back from Washington," Graham went on, "and sent him looking for the other nine. If he's dug them up, they'll be waiting at Center Station. We'll pick them up, and see if we can snitch the bait without grabbing the tribulation. Bang her along, Art—we've got half an hour."
HE LOOKED over the eight of them, noting their clean, square-jawed features, and knowing that the missing couple would never be found. Every one of these young huskies was well aware that their number should have been ten, and every one did not care a damn if their number was soon to be lessened again. These were men of the Intelligence Service, men trained to compensate for the loss of two by doing the work of ten.
"You know what you're to do?" he asked. They nodded. Graham jerked a thumb upward, reminding them of the observers twenty floors above, peering across the street, and into Sangster's office.
"The boys say there are no luminosities in the office, so it looks like we've got to deal with dupes. I'm going in, and you fellows can help me get out."
Again they nodded. None could see any reason why Graham should be so keen to risk his life, but it was enough for them that he intended to do just that. They were prepared to play their part.
"All right, fellows—I'm on my way!"
With a grin for the apprehensive Wohl, Graham hastened out, crossed the road, entered Bank of Manhattan. Five men lounged in the foyer. Disregarding them, he walked boldly to the pneumatic levitators, ascended to twenty-fourth.
No loungers were in sight on this floor, but he felt that glistening, crazy-eyes were watching him as he thrust open the door of the department of special finance.
He said, " 'Lo, Hetty!" and closed the door behind him. His keen eyes surveyed the room, noted the closed door of Sangster's private sanctum, the closed door of a large cupboard nearby. Sangster himself was not in evidence. Maybe the girl had told the truth about him.
