Collected Short Fiction, page 17
Presently I turned my attention to the ship. The marvelous periscope still gave the illusion that the bow was transparent. When I moved the little control lever, the jets of purple gas rushed out again. After a time I had the vessel worked loose from its place in the earth. Then, once again, I pulled up the little metal knob and pushed it forward.
The blackened terrain was colored by the purple mist. It was dimmed, blurred, blotted out. We shot through the purple cloud and abruptly plunged into clear air and blessed sunshine. Melvar stood by me, with her arm upon my shoulder. She cried out gladly as we came into the light. It was not quite noon and the sun was shining very brightly into the crater. The crescent Silver Lake was still gleaming with the same argent luster, and Astran shone like a great gem set in the dark red upland beyond.
Suddenly the clouds of purple mist below were thrown up and scattered in a thousand ragged streamers. A great blaze of opalescence burst out where it had been. A flood of fire ran over the Silver Sea. It was a white, milky light like that we had seen between the blue crystal globes of the great machine in the chasm. In a moment the whole crater was a torn and angry ocean of iridescent flame. The red upland was blotted out, and Astran vanished forever. White flames that were like the tongues of burning hydrogen that burst from exploding suns, flared up behind us.
Then we heard the sound of the cataclysm—a crashing roar like the thunder of a thousand falling mountains, as deep, as vast, as awful, as the crash of colliding worlds. At the same instant we felt the force of the greatest explosion that has ever occurred on earth. The rocket shot upward as though shot out of a mighty cannon. The blue sky darkened about us, and the stars flamed out like a million scintillating gems, in incredible myriads, gleaming cold and hard against the infinite empty blackness. We had been hurled out of the atmosphere and into interplanetary space!
Austen had struck! The world of the Krimlu was no more! The whole Silver Sea had gone off in a great explosion. From our ever-rising craft we could see the desert spread out around the mountain like a vast yellow sea, rimmed on the south by a steely blue line that was the ocean. The white fire dulled, faded, and was gone as quickly as it had flashed up. The crater of the Mountain of the Moon was left a wild black ruin of jagged, scattered masses of smoking stone. Of the Silver Lake, of the red vegetation upon the upland, of brilliant Astran, not a trace was left!
The crater was left far behind in the long arching flight of the rocket. The white frozen brilliance of the stars faded out, the untold glories of the solar corona were dimmed, and blue was restored to the midnight sky. We were plunging toward the desert in the direction of Kanowna. I pulled back the lever and used the full force of the rockets to check our meteor-like flight until the fuel was exhausted. A moment afterward we struck the earth.
We climbed out and left the vessel there on the sand. Just as the stars were coming out that night we arrived at the headquarters of a great sheep ranch. People were very much excited over the earthquake. (The shock of the explosion of the Silver Lake had been registered at every seismographic station in the world.)
The rancher and his wife cared for us with great hospitality, if ill-controlled curiosity. After we had had a week of rest, they took us by automobile to Kanowna. There I astounded them by rewarding their generosity with a magnificent emerald—I still had in my pack a half pound or so of jewels that Naro had brought me from Astran.
Melvar ever surprised me with her innocent beauty, her grace and poise, with the ease with which she learned to face new situations, and to meet people. I believe that no one ever suspected that she had not had a lifetime of training in the best of society. We were married at Kanowna, and reached Perth a few days later.
THE END
The Second Shell
HERE the well-known author of “The Alien Intelligence” and other thrilling stories presents his latest symphony, a fine piece of aerial fiction.
Few authors have Jack Williamson’s knack to pack their stories with so much adventure and with so much imaginative science. And while it may be fantastic today, most of it we know, sooner or later, will have become reality.
All scientists for decades have been wondering what the mysterious Heaviside Layer is. Radio engineers know of the Heaviside Layer from its effect on radio waves. It is very much of a fact, yet no one has ever been able to get near it, due to its distance above the surface of the earth, and till we have penetrated it, we cannot be sure what lies above it.
We know you will enjoy the present story, which easily bears re-reading from time to time.
IT WAS two o’clock in the morning of September 5, 1939. For a year and a half I had been at work on the San Francisco Times. I had come there immediately after finishing my year’s course at the army officers’ flying school at San Antonio, on the chance that my work would lead me into enough tong wars and exciting murder mysteries to make life interesting.
The morning edition had just been “put to bed” and I was starting out of the office when the night editor called me to meet a visitor who had just come in. The stranger came forward quickly. Roughly clad in blue shirt and overalls, boots, and Stetson, he had the bronze skin, dear eyes, and smooth movements of one who has spent his life out-of-doors.
He stopped before me and held out his hand with ji pleasant smile. I saw that his hair was gray; he was a little older than I had thought at first—fifty, perhaps. I liked the fellow instinctively.
“Robert Barrett?” he questioned in a pleasant drawl. I nodded.
“I’m Bill Johnson,” he said briefly.
“I want to see you. Secret Service business. Sabe?” He let me glimpse a badge; and we walked out into the night. As we started down the silent street it occurred to me that I had head of this man before.
“Are you the William Johnson who unearthed the radio station of the revolutionaries in Mexico in 1917?”
“I guess so. I’ve been in Mexico thirty years, and I’ve helped Uncle Sam out a time or two. It’s a case like that one, or worse, that I’m up here to see about now. I need a partner. I’ve been told about you. Are you game for a little adventure?”
“You’ve found your man.”
“They call you “Tiger Bob Barrett,” don’t they?” he said irrelevantly.
“I used to play football.”
He laughed. I have always been sensible about that nickname.
“Well, here’s the situation. I’ve been at Vernon’s mine in Durango, Mexico. Called El Tigre. Gold and thorium. There’s a little mystery—”
“Vernon? Is it Doc Vernon, the scientist. His daughter inherited a mine—”
“Si, Señor. Ellen Vernon is some young lady!”
“I knew them at Texas University. I was in Vernon’s chemistry class before he went daft on his death ray machine, and left to work on that.”
“The Doc is still at work on the machine. In fact, that is a part of the mystery.
“The mine is in an old corner of the desert, about fifty miles south of Mocolynatal—the big mountain. And there’s something queer going on about that mountain!
“Ellen got herself a radio set to pass away the time with. She got to picking up strange stuff. Sounds we couldn’t make out! Not just a strange lingo. They don’t sound like the human voice at all I Strange chirps and squeaks! Doc and I rigged up a directional set, and found that the calls were sent from Mocolynatal.
“The mountain’s in sight, to the north of us. I got to watching it, and found out something else. There have been airplanes flying about it—queer red machines with short stubby wings! They flew off mostly to the west. I did a little more investigation, and found that a line of run-down Jap tramp steamers has been hauling cargoes of the-lord-knows-what, and unloading somewhere along the Pacific coast of Mexico—evidently making connections with the red machines.
“Now, the Doc has his machine where he thinks it will be the end of the world if anybody gets hold of it. We’ve seen one or two of the red planes over the mine, and he is afraid they have found out about it, somehow. He got nervous, and sent me up to see Uncle Sam. It is all news to the State Department, and we are going to investigate.
“One of the Jap tramps is leaving here tomorrow, and there will be a couple of destroyers on the trail, to see what they unload, and where. I’ve got hold of a new airplane—a queer little machine called the Camel-back, that I’m taking along on board. A jewel for mountain work—you could land it on a handkerchief. I needed a partner, and the Doc told me about you. Want to go along?”
“You bet I do! I’ve been longing for something to turn up.”
“Well, be at the landing field at nine tomorrow—this morning, rather, ready for anything. This may be interesting before we’re through. Buenos Noches.”
A Raid
and a Mystery
THE old fellow left me, and I walked on toward my apartment, thinking over what I had heard. Dr. Vernon’s invention a success at last! I remembered very clearly my days with the nervous, stammering little scientist, always sure that tomorrow would bring the great secret. And I thought of Ellen—indeed, I had often done so in the two years since I had heard from her. I wondered why she and her father had left Austin so suddenly, and why their destination had been kept a secret from all their friends.
As for the matter of the red planes, I could suppose nothing but that the outs in Mexican politics were preparing a little military surprise for the ins. There have been too many military forces raised secretly in Mexico for one of them to be much of a novelty. Then I thought of the queer radio messages. They did not fit in very well. But my mind returned to Ellen again. I thought no more of the red machines. I had no thought—no one on earth had warning—of the terrible force that was rising to menace the world.
In the morning, when I came down to the lobby, I found a curious clamor going. There was a hum of conversation, and people were passing around redpaper “extras”. It was five minutes before I could get one to read the screaming headlines:
RED PLANES RAID FACTORY,
THREE HUNDRED DEAD
MILLION DOLLAR STOCK OF
THORIUM TAKEN
The account went on to describe the raid, at four o’clock that morning, of a fleet of red airplanes upon the Rogers Gas Mantle Factory, at St. Louis. It was stated that three hundred people had been killed, and that the entire stock of thorium nitrate on hand, worth over a million dollars, had been carried off.
Much of a mystery was made of it. Police had failed to identify three of the four red-uniformed corpses left behind. Fingerprints identified the other as a noted criminal recently out of Leavenworth.
No one seemed to have any idea why the thorium had been taken, since the chief use of that radioactive metal, which is similar to radium, but far less active, is in the manufacture of gas mantles.
It was farther stated that the raiders had released “clouds of a luminous purple gas,” which had caused most of the fatalities, and which seemed to have destroyed the gravity of metallic objects about. It was said that the factory building was curiously wrecked, as if the heavy machinery had gone up through the roof.
At first it struck me that this must be simply a newspaper canard. Then I remembered what Bill Johnson had told me of the strange red airplanes in Durango, and of the mystery of the secret radio station. Then I was not so sure. I ate a little breakfast and hurried out to the landing field. I found Bill with a copy of the paper in his hand. His wrinkled face had a look of eager concentration on it.
“Howdy, Bob,” he drawled. “This looks interesting. Have you seen it?” I nodded. “It must be the same red planes. Let’s get off.”
We walked out on the field, where the “Camel-back” plane was waiting. It was the first one I had seen; one of the first models built, I believe. It was based on Cierva’s Autogiro, or “windmill plane”. But there was an arrangement by which the rotating mast could be drawn into the fuselage, the rotation stopped, and the vanes folded to the side, so that the machine, in the air, could be transformed into an ordinary monoplane, capable of a much higher flying speed than the Autogiro. When the pilot desired, a touch of a button would release the mast and vanes, and the machine became an Autogiro, which could spiral slowly or drop almost perpendicularly to a safe landing on a small spot of ground.
The machine had a further innovation in the shape of a Wright turbine motor. This had but a single important moving part, the shaft which bore the rotors, the flanged wheel that drew the mixture into the combustion chamber, and the propeller. Because of its extreme light weight and high efficiency, the internal combustion turbine engine now promises to come into general use.
The name of the machine, “the Camel-back,” was due to the peculiar hump to the rear of the mast, covering the levers for raising and lowering the rotating “windmill.”
The plane carried a .50 calibre machine gun in the forward cockpit.
“Get aboard, Bob, and we’re off,” Bill said as we got on our parachutes. “The tramp weighed anchor at four this morning, and the destroyers left an hour later. We’ll be able to pick them up.”
Five minutes later our trim little machine was rolling forward with the “windmill” spinning. It swept smoothly upward, Bill moved into gear the device that brought down the mast, and soon we were over the cold gray Pacific, with the city fading into the haze of the blue northern horizon.
Bill was flying the ship, and my thoughts turned back to Dr. Vernon and his daughter. The Doctor was a pudgy, explosive little man, who thought, ate, and breathed science. His short, restless figure always bore the marks of laboratory cataclysms, and his life had been marred by the earlier lack of success in perfecting the terrible machine to which he was devoting his life. I had always thought it strange that a man so mild and tender-hearted should toil so to build a death-dealing instrument, and I wondered what he would do with it now if he had it completed.
It was five years since I had seen Ellen. She had been but a spritely, elfin girl. I remembered her chiefly as having been instrumental, one day at a party, in getting me to drop myself into a supposed easy chair, which turned out to be a tub of ice water.
CHAPTER II
The Menace of the Mist
THE little Camel-back plane was a wonder. The soft whispering hum of the turbine engine belied its tremendous power. The slender, white metal wings cut the air at the rate of two and a half miles per minute. Presently we saw a smudge of smoke where the blue sea met the bluer sky ahead, and soon the little machine had dropped on the deck of a destroyer.
The sister vessel was four or five miles to starboard. The two ships were plowing deliberately along, at about ten knots, keeping some twenty-five miles behind the tramp steamer they were shadowing. One of the officers took us up on the little bridge, and we learned that the little ships were keeping track of the tramp with their radio equipment.
The radio man took us in and let us listen to the calls between the tramp and some point far ahead. Those were the strangest sounds I have ever heard. Thin, stuttering, stridulating squeaks and squeals! Even allowing for distortion in transmission, it was hard to imagine what might make them.
“That’s something talking,” Bill said. “And human beings don’t make noises like that.”
“It may be,” the operator said, “that what we hear is just an ordinary conversation, ‘scrambled’ to keep us from understanding it, and ‘unscrambled’ by the receiver. Such devices have been in use for years.”
But there was no conviction in his voice. And certainly, those strange noises sounded to me like the communication of some alien beings. But what might they be?
Later in the day, Bill and I took turns in going up with the Camel-back to keep tab on the movements of the tramp, since the radio calls had ceased. The day passed, and the white sun sank back of the glittering western waves. During the hot, moonless night, the ether was still, and we could do nothing but steam on in the same direction. I went up twice, but the tramp was showing no lights, and I failed to locate her. At midnight Bill came on deck, and I went below to a bunk.
It was just after dawn that the alarm was sounded. I was awakened by the roar of the little ship’s forward gun. It was firing steadily as I went on deck, and I heard a confusion of sounds—the siren was blowing, and there was a medley of shouts, orders, and curses, punctuated with the reports of small arms.
I saw that the Camel-back was gone from the deck. Bill was. up again.
As I stepped on deck there was a great clanging roar from below. The propellers had been lifted from the water! The engines raced madly for a minute, and then were stopped. I ran to the trail to see what had happened to throw the organization of the crew into such confusion. And indeed it was an amazing sight that met my eyes!
The ship was floating in the air, a hundred feet above the waves! The air was still, the sea was smooth and black . . . The eastern sky was lit by the silver curtain of the dawn, with the old moon hanging in it. Before us, and below, two hundred yards away, was a queer luminous hill—a shining cloud of red-purple vapor that rolled spread heavily upon the black water. I saw two similar twisting mounds of gas astern, gleaming with a painful radiance.
And the ship was rising into the air!
It was drifting swiftly up, through the still air, so that a wind seemed to blow down upon us. I saw a rifle hanging in the air ten feet above me, and a steel boat rising a dozen feet over the mast. Suddenly it came to me that something had negated the gravity of the metal parts of the ship. I thought of the story of the gravity-destroying bombs used in the raid of the night before upon the thorium stores.
The forward gun was still firing steadily, though the terrorized men had deserted the others. I saw a man point above us, and looked. A red airplane, with thick fuselage and short wings, was flying silently and swiftly across our bows. As it passed, something fell from it. It was a dark object that fell and exploded just above us, bursting into a thick, roily cloud of shining purple mist. The light of it hurt my eyes. And the ship plunged upward faster.
