Collected Short Fiction, page 129
“A stranger,” the guard announced. “Came in a space-shell. Says Mr. Marth will see him.”
He motioned toward the wicket, and White stepped forward. Without a word he extended one of his cards. A hand reached out silently, and took it.
Five minutes later the massive doors swung open.
“This way, Mr. White,” said a suave servant.
White followed into the cool interior of the house, down a long hall that at first seemed dark, and into a magnificent room, almost oval in shape, and roofed with a dome of some green substance that glowed translucently, like jade illuminated from beyond.
Four persons were seated at a table in the side of the room. They had apparently been playing some game of cards, for the pasteboards were scattered over the table, and round counters of various colors, and an old envelope on the back of which the scores had been marked.
The game had stopped, however, and they all four were looking at White as he entered.
One of the men was very tall and thin, with sparse black hair and a face that was a twisted snarl. Opposite him sat a man so gross of body that White thought he could hardly have got to his feet without aid, his arms, resting upon the table, were prodigiously thick; his hands were great pads; the face a bulging, pasty mask, small eyes sunk deep in it.
Opposite the third man was a woman. White was astonished at the superb, the regal, beauty of her. Full lips were a scarlet slash against alabaster skin; her hair, piled high, was a tangle of dark gleams with her eyes flaming somberly beneath it.
The third man, while the others remained seated, rose to greet White. Short, pink-skinned, he had that physique best described as roly-poly. Wide blue eyes twinkled innocently into his fat, pink face. Abundant, long, and very white, his hair made a halo that enhanced his air of benign simplicity.
“I am Marth,” he said, smiling graciously as he came to meet White.
“My name is White.”
They shook hands, under the jade dome.
“White?” inquired Marth, his voice silken-soft.
“Simply White.” Smiling vaguely, he declined to identify himself farther.
A little icy film seemed to hide the genial twinkle of Marth’s blue eyes for a moment, and to pass again.
“Could you be, possibly,” he asked, in the same soft voice, “White of—Denver?”
“Yes, I am from Denver, Earth,” said White. “I am surprised that you should divine the fact.”
His toneless voice, however, expressed no such surprise. “You are here—” asked Marth, “professionally?”
“Yes,” said White. “I am a news cameraman for the West-America Television Syndicate, of Denver. Your place here, Micronia, has become so famous, Mr. Marth, that we wished to present it to our audience. I have presumed to land, confident of your permission to make the pictures. You have here a most remarkable estate. Our audience will be grateful.”
“Your cameras, Mr. White?”
“I left them in my space-shell, down by the lake.”
“I know of a White, of Denver.”
“The name is not uncommon.”
CHAPTER III
Advancing Destruction
l Still innocently twinkling, the blue eyes of the millionaire searched White’s face for a moment; then Marth smiled again, with warm benevolence.
“Very well, Mr. White. It will be a pleasure to grant your request. Please sit down, and allow me to offer you refreshment. I hope you are not pressed for time. Time,” he added, “comes to mean little to us who live so remote from the world of men.”
He motioned to a chair beside the card-littered table, and White sat down.
The thin man and the very fat man, without having spoken a word since White entered the room, rose silently—the fat man heaving himself to his feet unaided, catching the edge of the table with his great hands—and both silently departed.
The beautiful woman remained at her place. White looked at her; she caught his eye and smiled dashingly; her dark eye radiant. Marth did not offer to present her.
Marth had given no order, but a servant in white came presently into the green room, with a tray of slender glasses that brimmed with a dark-red, frothing, fragrant drink. He handed a glass to White.
White set it on the arm of his chair. He turned as if to look in admiration at the woman, as she reached for her own glass, and his elbow knocked it to the floor.
“Oh, you spilled your drink,” she cried. “Take mine!”
“Most awkward of me,” murmured White. “Terribly sorry . . . . Thank you!”
He accepted the glass from her fingers, and put it to his lips.
Marth had watched the incident narrowly; a cold, pale film had come again over the warm twinkle of his eyes. His voice, however, was soft as ever when he spoke:
“Forgive me, Mr. White. I neglected to introduce my companion. She is Miss Verlin Starr.”
With a dazzling smile, the woman gave White a small, scented hand.
“A pleasure,” murmured White. “Unless I am much mistaken, the name has been mentioned to me before.”
“Not unlikely,” said Marth. “Verlin is a woman of accomplishment.”
The woman shrugged white shoulders, and laughed deliciously.
White pulled out his watch, a thick, heavy, old-fashioned affair, gold-cased, worn on a strong steel chain. He consulted it ostentatiously, and turned to Marth:
“I shall not trouble you farther. The pictures may be made in a few minutes.”
The cold film in Marth’s eyes intensified; they became almost menacing. And a little icy, metallic note stole into the caressing softness of his voice.
“You must not think of leaving so soon, Mr. White! I must urge you to stay. Urge you!” In his emphasis of the word was a hint of grim menace. “Visitors are so rare at Micronia that we cannot let them leave so hastily.”
White continued to look reluctantly at his watch.
“We were playing tujo,” said Verlin Starr, with a brilliant smile at White. “A new game that has just come from Venus. Since Tulles and Parker have deserted us, perhaps you would join Mr. Marth and myself in a three-handed game?”
“Really—” said White.
“You must,” pressed Marth, still with the deadly ring of steel beneath the velvet of his voice. “A most interesting game, Mr. White. You must learn it, if you haven’t played it. It offers an opportunity for intelligence to defeat mere cleverness.”
“I have watched a few hands,” admitted White, reluctantly restoring the big watch to his pocket.
They drew closer to the table. Verlin Starr picked up the deck of cards; her small white hands shuffled them with astonishing deft skill. Marth pushed a stack of counters across to White, and ruled off a new space on the old envelope, for the score.
The cards were dealt and played; Verlin Starr was narrowly the winner over White.
“You must have played more than a few hands, Mr. White,” she laughed as she gathered the counters, smiling archly.
“You played your hand cleverly, indeed, Mr. White,” admitted Marth, the jovial twinkle once more in his blue eyes. “But, I think you will admit, not with real intelligence. The diamond lead was obvious. So obvious that Miss Starr never would have suspected it.
“Would you, Verlin?”
She laughed at him, goldenly, and handed the deck to White.
That hand White won.
“You displayed real intelligence, then,” Marth applauded. “The merely clever man would have passed, instead of playing the lower suit, with that obvious knave in reserve.”
l White passed the deck to Marth, to be shuffled and dealt. Idly, he picked up the old envelope, to look at the scores. It slipped from his fingers and fluttered beneath the table. He bent and searched for it, with a little exclamation of displeasure at himself.
Marth was on his feet beside him as he straightened up, cold and merciless steel gleaming naked in his eyes. With savage abruptness, he snatched the envelope from White’s fingers.
“Sorry,” murmured White. “My unfortunate clumsiness—”
Marth looked from White’s face to the envelope, and the cold fury faded from his face. Slowly the benign twinkle came back into his blue eyes. Toying absently with the envelope he sat down. With a weakness in his voice, as if he had just undergone some severe nervous strain, he said:
“Let’s continue the game. Pardon my nervousness, Mr. White.”
But Marth had apparently lost all interest in the game. He played very poorly, and White was again the winner.
Verlin passed the deck to White again, and when both his hands were busy with shuffling them and his eyes were upon them, she spoke to him in a soft voice:
“Mr. White, please don’t move.”
He looked up at her. She was smiling at him with a queer, eager smile. Steadily held in her small hands, its bright tube pointed at his heart, was a ray-needle.
“Very well,” said White. “Trust me. I am familiar with your achievements, Miss Starr.”
Gaunt as a skeleton, the thin man Tulles stalked back into the room, followed by waddling Parker.
“We took the liberty, Mr. White, of going down to your space-shell to bring up your cameras,” said Tulles, in a crafty voice.
“Very kind of you,” murmured White, sitting in front of the woman’s motionless weapon.
“We discovered,” wheezed the gross Parker, “that you neglected to bring any films.”
“Films?” White seemed mildly astonished. “Why, so I did! I shall have to go back to Mars for them. And at once. The pictures must be aboard the next week’s liner for earth.”
He started to rise. Verlin Starr thrust upward the ray-needle, smiling negligently.
“Please keep your seat, Mr. White.”
Upon Marth’s once jovial face had come a stern little frown, and the twinkle of innocent merriment was once more gone from his eyes, leaving in them a chill blankness that was—deadly.
“White,” he said, with all the deceptive softness gone from your voice, “you are hardly even clever. I knew from the first that you did not intend to use your cameras. I detained you with our little game to give Parker and Tulles an opportunity to investigate you. And they find out that you are the White of Denver of whom I knew.”
“And,” added Tulles malevolently, “that you left Denver at the summons of the Council of the Planetary League.”
“That’s true,” admitted White, his vague smile undismayed. “Though the matter was supposed to be strictly confidential. “News collecting, you see, is merely a hobby of mine. But frequently I am able to report something of public interest—the apprehension of some criminal.” Though there was no hint of menace in White’s mild voice, the others stiffened.
“Mr. White,” said Marth, “just one thing delays my signalling to Miss Starr to ray you out. I should like to know precisely what information brought you to Micronia.”
“I’m sure you would,” said White, smiling.
“And I can assure you,” he added, “that I gave the information to others, who are only awaiting the hour I set, to blow Micronia out of existence. It would have been simple enough, in the first place, when I first found you were hiding here. We are in range, you know, of rocket torpedoes fired from Mars. But I wished to recover the Electron Flame, instead of destroying it.”
The four were staring at him silently, and he saw panic on the thin face of Tulles. A fixed, bright smile was on the woman’s face; the others were expressionless.
White deliberately consulted his big watch.
“Give me the paper you took,” he said, “and permit me to return to Mars. I will promise you forty-eight hours to make good your escape. Otherwise Micronia will be blasted out of existence. My failure to return will be signal enough for that. And with all the batteries of the Fleet trained on you already, you can hardly hope to defend yourselves, even with the Electron Flame.”
l Marth snarled at him like an infuriated animal, and crouched down in his chair, tapping on the edge of the table with the envelope on which he had written the scores. Abruptly, with decision upon his unpleasant face, he turned to the waiting men:
“Tulles, have the yacht hauled out. Parker, have everything packed and our people aboard in half an hour.”
The men hurried out.
“Mr. White,” Marth said in blandly cold tones, “you are causing us the inconvenience of leaving Micronia. You are cleverer than you look, but not really intelligent. You have a few minutes left. I suggest that you use them in thinking over the difference in meaning between those two words, cleverness and intelligence.”
“Shall I—” asked Verlin Starr, with a meaning little gesture of her ray-needle.
“No,” Marth told her. “The cleverness of Mr. White has earned him the dignity of another fate.
“Allow me, Mr. White, to point out the very simple error in your supposition that we will return what you ask, to avoid the destruction of Micronia. It is true that we will not undertake to defend it with the—er, weapon. That would involve considerable risk to us, and serious injury to a planet that we are now justified in regarding as our own property.
“What you did not take into account, Mr. White, is that we are prepared to leave Micronia upon very short notice, for another place not so likely to be discovered.”
“Thank you,” said White, smiling vaguely.
Marth got to his feet. White, watching, saw that the tattered envelope that a moment before had been in his fingers, had vanished.
Verlin Starr gestured carelessly with her ray-needle, and White stood up. Marth led the way out of the oval green room, and the woman followed after White.
They left the building through a side door, and crossed the broad verandah. Once more the dark sky of the tiny planetoid was overhead, set with pale stars, huge, gibbous ruddy Mars hanging in it, and the small, flaming sun.
Before them was the great hangar of white metal. Its vast doors were open, and a small spheroid rocket, silver-bright, had been drawn out of it upon its wheeled cradle. Two score men were furiously busy moving baggage and supplies aboard, with the aid of trucks and elevators.
In huge letters across her side White read the name of the yacht, Bright Bird.
“Wait here, Mr. White,” said Marth. “You are covered from the ports. Do not move until we have taken off. You are free, then,” he finished ironically, “to do as you will.”
Verlin Starr smiled flashingly at White. Regretfully, he thought, she slipped the ray-needle back into her clothing. She and Marth hastened aboard the space vessel.
From his position on the verandah, out of the cruel sun, White could see the little valley below, and his tiny, silvered space-shell, still on the vivid turf beside the shimmering lake. Behind him was a path that climbed the black pinnacle to the radio building and the little observatory.
Three men in white came running down the path, as he watched, and went aboard the yacht. Other people came hastening from the house. The loading of the baggage was soon finished. The last white-uniformed man clambered into the yawning valve.
White was left alone outside the space-yacht.
The abrupt silence that had succeeded the confused clamor of loading was suddenly disturbed by a faint hissing—a curious rushing sibilance. Puzzled, trying to discover the source of it, White looked down into the little valley where his tiny space-shell lay.
He saw that an amazing change had come over the little vessel.
A deeply violet glow had covered its trimly curved, bright hull. A film of weird light. Bright particles swirled up about it, in little clouds like heavy vapor, glitteringly luminous with sudden vivid flashings of violet and green.
The metal of the little craft seemed to crumble, to fuse. It sagged and collapsed upon the grass.
That did not end the phenomenon.
With increasing speed, a glow of rich violet spread over the green turf and across the surface of the pellucid lake. Denser clouds of sparkling vapor rose, pierced with a million stabbing gleams of green and violet, as if from innumerable tiny explosions.
The shining ground crumbled—was eaten away. A crater appeared where the space-shell had been. An irregular conical pit, walled with violet radiance, ever increasing in size more swiftly, as its sides dissipated, sagged, fell in.
The edge of the crater touched the lake-shore. Water poured into it, was consumed in clouds of scintillant vapor, so that it never covered the bottom of the incandescent pit. In a little time the lake was dry. The crater ate its inexorable way across its black floor, and the little valley began to fill with the heavy clouds that were shot with tiny lights of violet and green.
White shuddered. This incandescent cancer in the heart of Micronia was the Electron Flame. A wave of self-perpetuating destruction, annihilating matter itself. Doomed to spread so long as it could reach more matter, unless stopped by the secret combination of wave-frequencies.
Once that lurid cancer of destruction thrust its roots into a planet it would continue its terrible growth until the planet was consumed, disintegrated. Material weapons would be in vain to stop it, material barriers but new food for it.
Only the secret waves, designated upon the stolen sheet of yellow paper, could check the relentless terror of its advance.
The great metal seal of the yacht closed with an ominous clang. White sprang to shelter behind a great pillar of the verandah as the hot jets from its rocket motors roared their bellowing song. A scorching hurricane screamed about him, and died away.
He saw the Bright Bird vanishing about the valley. A little dwindling half moon in the dark cavern of the star-gemmed sky, one side of it aflame with the reflect sunlight, the other invisible in deepest shadow.
Down in the valley, the Electron Flame was growing ever more rapidly. A vast, conical crater of violet luminescence, its bright walls shattering into it as it grew, devoured in the maw of all-consuming annihilation. Out of it rose a leaden cloud of fiery vapor, aglitter with myriad evanescent sparks of violet and emerald.
