Collected Short Fiction, page 306
Oh, fair Sorainya—slain!
A light step raced through the sliding door behind the shrubs, and a breathless voice panted his name, joyously. Lanning looked up, slowly. And a numbing wonder shook him.
“Denny Lanning!”
Lethonee came running toward him, through the flowers. Her violet eyes were bright with tears, and her face was a white smile of incredulous delight. Lanning turned shuddering to meet her, speechless.
For the golden voice of the warrior queen had mocked him in her cry. And the ghost of Sorainya’s glance glinted green in her shining eyes. She had even donned a close-fitting velvet gown of shimmering crimson, that shone like Sorainya’s mail.
She came into his open, trembling arms.
“Denny——” she sobbed happily.
“At last we are—one.”
The world was spinning. This same hill had borne Sorainya’s citadel. Jonbar and Gyronchi—conflicting possible worlds, stemming from the same beginning—were now fused into the same reality. Lethonee and Sorainya, also——
Eagerly, he drew her against his racing heart. And he murmured, happily——
“One!”
THE END
The Dead Spot
The Dead Spot came at dusk in May, 1940, heralded by a brief purple glare in the sky, and all who saw it crumbled to a gray, heavy ash! Dwellings and barns and wheat fell into heaps of dust—and America’s golden harvest land became a gray cancer of leprous doom.
THE DEAD SPOT came on May 8, 1940. One day the land had been golden with the harvest of wheat. The next, in a circle that covered ten thousand square miles of Kansas and Nebraska, there was only death.
It happened at dusk. A brief purple glare lit the sky. All who had seen it felt a burning of the skin, a leaden ache in the bones, a torturing thirst. And they died—hideously.
Medical skill was useless; doctors fell with the rest. The corpses crumbled to a gray, heavy ash, that no wind could stir. Dwellings and barns and wheat, rotted by the incredible decay that attacked all organic matter, fell to heaps of dust. It was curiously luminous by night, and the sun rose upon a flat gray waste of leprous doom.
Its edge was queerly sharp. And all who ventured beyond the barrier, even planes flying high above, instantly fell. The whole world was appalled by this inexplicable cancer on the planet that teleview reporters named the Dead Spot. What had happened? What if it happened again? Seeking an answer to those harrowing questions, the President called Congress into emergency session.
No relief was needed, for no survivors had come from the murdered land. Science failed to explain what had desolated it. The perplexed legislators ended by creating the Special Secret Service.
Seeking a chief for the SSS, the President sent for a man who had been on the bottom of the Pacific on the catastrophic night. Ryeland Ames, then only twenty-five, was already twice famous for daring deep-sea explorations in the benthosphere of his own design, and for startling success in smashing the atom with his own super-cyclotron.
A tanned, rugged six-footer, with stiff, tangled red hair and level bine eyes, Ames walked into the executive office and listened soberly.
“I’ll do anything I can, Mr. President,” he said. “But there are older men than I am, better trained. Rathbone, for instance, is the best radiation physicist in the world.”
“Rathbone is in the hospital,” said the President, “not expected to recover. He was injured in an experiment that went wrong.” His eyes leapt back to the lean scientist-explorer. “No, you’re the man for the job, Ames. The Dead Spot swallowed two hundred thousand people. If the thing happens again, it may take two million—or the whole world, for all we know! Your job is to find what it is, and stop it.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” said Ryeland Ames. “I’ll do my best.”
AND Ames did it. The SSS was completely organized within a week, with five hundred men recruited from police and federal investigation departments. He set a guard about the Dead Spot, surrounded it with a ten-foot steel fence to beep out the unwary, and gathered a staff of scientists to study every angle of the disaster.
He even got Dr. Gresham Rathbone. The physicist was dying in the hospital of an incurable heart trouble, aggravated by his injuries. Ames built him a new heart!
This novel blood-pump utilized the principles of Lindbergh and Carrel. It was a tiny, compact instrument, anchored in the chest cavity, its platinum tubes ingeniously sutured to the great veins and arteries. The nerves, from the cardiac plexuses, controlled it through indictive contact with a minute eleetro-magnetic relay.
Its most remarkable feature, however, was its motive power. A trace of hydrogen from water vapor, transmuted into helium through a secret process Ames had discovered in his super-cyclotron experiments, provided exhaustless energy. This “iron heart,” Ames promised, would run a hundred years. It was only necessary for Rathbone to take weekly injections of the pale-green liquid catalyst that activated the atomic reaction.
On his feet in a few weeks, Rathbone joined Ames’ scientific staff. He was a tall man, hawk-faced, with thick grizzled hair and sharp, deep-set frosty blue eyes, still pale and irritable from his illness.
“I’ve drawn a map of the Dead Spot,” Ames told him, when he reported to the headquarters tent. “The center of the circle was the town of Freedom.” His level eyes searched Rathbone’s bleak, seamed face. “And we have discovered that that is where you were injured. I want to know what you were doing there, Rathbone.”
His hollow eyes smouldered with a savage bitterness.
“I’d be dead, but for you,” Rathbone said. “And I’ll do anything I can.” His lean fingers closed like claws. “The man who injured me was Dr. Clyburn Hope!” he gasped hoarsely. “And it was Hope who made the Dead Spot!”
Ames started. “Tell me,” he whispered. “What happened?”
“Hope had an uncanny genius,” rasped Rathbone’s nasal voice. “He was the best biophysicist in America. He was working at Freedom. By inducing mutations and growing artificial cells, he was creating new species.”
“New species?” Ames gasped.
Rathbone’s sunken eyes flared again.
“That’s it—he wasn’t satisfied with the present human race. That’s where we quarreled!” His hands relaxed. “Mutations have been caused most successfully by transforming the genes of cell-chromosones with various rays,” he explained. “And Hope called on me to work with him, because I had specialized in radiations.”
Ames leaned forward, listening.
“Evolution,” Rathbone went on, “has been a haphazard advance, made possible by the bombardment of the germ plasm with cosmic rays and their secondary radiations. Such men as Muller, with his fruit fly experiments, have accelerated evolution many thousands of times by making use of X-or radium rays. But Hope found something better yet—the sigma-field.
“That is a special space warp analogously related to the magnetic field. Its significant peculiarity is that it makes nearly all atoms above neon unstable, radioactive. The sigma-field speeds evolution to the limit imposed by actual destruction of the germ cells!
“With that, and his technique of building synthetic life-cells through combination of the great protein molecules, Hope set out to create a new race, to replace humanity!”
His claws of hands had knotted again.
“That’s why we quarreled. For I knew that his new race must be enemies of the old.” He caught a gasping breath. “We—we fought in the laboratory. He injured me—fatally, but for your skill, Ames.
“And his sigma-field is what made the Dead Spot!”
“Eh!” Ames stared at him, at last nodded. “I see,” he murmured. “The radioactivity destroys normal life—could it be to make room for his new beings?” He stood up, eagerly. “Can you neutralize the field?”
“No.” Rathbone shook his head. “Hope treated me like a mechanic. I designed equipment to his order, but he was very secretive about his theories and discoveries. Of course, however, my skill is at your service.”
“Thanks, Doctor,” Ames said. “We need you. If you can crack the Dead Spot—”
AND gaunt Gresham Rathbone became head of the great new SSS laboratory beside the desolated circle. Millions of dollars were poured into it. He and Ames and a hundred others worked there, desperately. A dozen lives were lost, by hideous cancer-like radiation-burns. But the secret of the sigma-field eluded all search.
And the Dead Lands remained unconquerably—deadly.
A series of strange deaths, however, three years later, in metallurgical refineries, the Fort Knox depository, and the Bank of England, led to investigation by the SSS. All the victims had died of radiation-burns. And Ames’ men found millions of dollars in gold, silver, and platinum, that showed a diminishing temporary radioactivity. The source could not be traced, but Ames suggested a theory.
“Transmutation could be going on, in the Dead Spot,” he told Rathbone. “Precious heavy metals, under that radiation, building up out of light elements. If it were possible for men to enter and depart alive—”
“Men,” broke in Rathbone solemnly, “or the synthetic beings of Dr. Hope!”
And other years went by. Ryeland Ames remained in charge of the SSS. His haggard face grew grim. His blue eyes took on a haunted look. For months of each year he lived in an observation balloon moored near the wall of death, studying its radiation with electrometers, spectroscopes, and Geiger counter tubes. Terrible burns sent him three times to the hospital. His bleak face was dark-tanned, scarred.
He became grimly close-mouthed, even with Rathbone. Few had seen the photograph always in his wallet. Its background was the flat desolation of the Dead Lands. It showed the tiny, distant figure of a woman, flying high over that weird plain—apparently on white frail wings. But he answered no questions about the picture’s original.
The Dead Spot, late in 1950, began to grow!
Like a gray cancer on the Earth, it spread. The fence was swallowed up. Vegetation and buildings fell to heavy, unstirring dust. Few lives were lost, for Ames superintended the evacuation of doomed towns and farms ahead of the slow, inexorable advance. But no effort could check it.
The Dead Lands had already touched the Missouri. Its waters now absorbed more and more of the deadly energy. It became a river of terrible death, weirdly luminous by night. All the abandoned cities below crumbled to the dust of death; Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans.
Two years later, in a rude little camp that would have to be abandoned on the morrow, Ames told Rathbone that he was going into the Dead Spot.
“But you can’t do that!” Stern lines formed around the long mouth of Rathbone, and gray fear shadowed his hollow eyes. “It would be—death.”
“I’ve got to,” Ames said flatly. “The Dead Spot has got to be stopped. From its rate of spread, you can figure the life of any city, or the life of the world. And that isn’t very long.”
“A dozen SSS men have gone in,” Rathbone objected. “With every protection we could devise. And not one came out. Life simply can’t exist, in the Dead Spot.”
“But it does. I’ve seen it—photographed it.”
And Ames displayed the picture in his wallet. Frowning, doubtful, Rathbone studied it silently.
“Snapped it out of the balloon, with telephoto lens.” The haunted eyes and the deep voice of Ames had softened. “I had seen her before, with binoculars—half a dozen times in the last three years. And—well—I’ve dreamed of her.”
The gaunt scientist made a harsh snorting sound, and a deep flush spread over the tanned face of Ames.
“I’m just telling you, Rathbone,” he said grimly. “I’m hot explaining it, because I can’t. But, three different times in the balloon, when I was half dead with fatigue, I thought—or dreamed—that she was speaking to me. She’s winged, really. Her name’s Arthedne. She’s in some desperate trouble. And she knows a lot about all this mystery. If I could find her—”
RATHBONE snorted again.
“Anyhow, I’m going.” Ames reached swiftly for the photograph. “I’ve got the outfit designed—a few new additions of my own. I want you to cheek my plans—”
“I tell you,” Rathbone insisted, “life can’t exist——”
“It does!” Ames rapped. “What’s more, there is a regular traffic, in and out. Our detectors have picked up rocket planes, flying too high to trail. And there’s more poisoned metal on the market! It has been doctored to neutralize the radiation, but there’s still enough to prove it came out of the Dead Spot!”
A queer-looking plane, a month later, stood on a field near the advancing border of the Dead Lands. It was squat, stubby, gray with a special lead paint. The streamlines of its fuselage covered a four-foot globe that contained a layer of water between double walls of lead alloy.
Beside the machine, Ryeland Ames stood swaying in a bulky suit of lead cloth, so heavy that even his powerful frame could hardly support it. His blue eyes peered through immense lenses of leaded glass. A heavy automatic was strapped to his belt, balanced by two bright cylinders of steel.
“The lead will absorb part of the rays,” he told eager teleview reporters. “Magnetic screens will deflect a few more. The hydrogen atoms in the water will catch a few neutrons. Protection isn’t perfect. But I hope to see the middle of the Dead Spot, and come back alive.”
He started clambering awkwardly into the big lead ball.
A reporter demanded, “Those cylinders—”
“Atomic bombs,” grunted Ames. “Stable triatomic hydrogen, under high pressure. My catalytic process will convert it instantly into helium—and enough free energy to level half a city.”
The heavy door was screwed into place. A periscope peered back and forth. The plane roared clumsily across the field, took off heavily. Watchers held their breath, as it flew into the unseen barrier. But it didn’t fall. It drove on, straight into the desolate heart of the Dead Lands. It diminished to a speck, and vanished beneath the gray horizon.
But the deep voice of Ames boomed a report through the short wave communicator:
“Following a faint streak that must have been a highway. Below is a rectangular pattern in the dust. Must have been a town . . .
Silence again, whispering static.
“Oxygen valve stuck!” It was half an hour later, Ames’ voice was fainter. “Had to open port to breath. Can’t understand failure—tested valve this morning. . . .
“Cramped and aching. Skin beginning to tingle. Rays getting to me, all right. But may have time. . . .”
Another humming pause.
“Something ahead. . . .
“Buildings! Green smoke puffing from a tall stack. A long gray dump, and big shovels digging. Looks like a mine!—And a field, with long rocket planes standing on it! Must be where the transmuted metal . . .”
Ten strained, whispering minutes.
“Engine heating.” The voice was hoarse, taut. “Missing—Gasoline disintegrating, perhaps—but, there!” It was a gasp of incredulous wonder. “There—it’s a city! . . .
“Yes, a city in the middle of the Dead Spot. Metal towers. Stacks pouring out green smoke. And machines—such huge machines! But I’ve got to turn back. Radiation getting me. . . .”
A longer silence, then the final whisper:
“Never make it. Motor cutting out. Missouri in sight ahead. Something—a queer flicker on the bluffs! And I see something moving—looks like a metal giant!—Well, Rathbone, you told me so! But carry on! The SSS must stop the Dead Spot!”
The faint voice ceased abruptly. The whir and crackle of the strange energies of the Dead Lands was the only farther sound from the receiver. Night fell, and the forbidden circle turned weirdly luminous again.
PRESSING both hands against his throbbing head, Ryeland Ames tried to sit up. His head bumped something. Then he remembered. The crash had stunned him. He was still in the leaden ball.
His skin was feverish, stinging. A dull ache gnawed at his bones. Thirst tortured him. He wanted to drink the water seeping through the fractured inner wall, but he knew that absorbed radiations had turned it to liquid death—The dusty, crumbling death of the Dead Spot.
Clumsy in the heavy suit, he opened the little door. It was dusk. The flat waste already glowed with its eerie, sullen luminosity. The bluff beyond the Missouri shone darkly, and the river was a lazy serpent of lambent doom.
Them he had seen what looked like a metal giant. Now, riverward, he caught a fugitive gleam. Was it the same metal thing, skulking cautiously up the dry ravine, stalking him? And what was it? Man, or some weird creation of Clyburn Hope?
He scrambled stiffly out of the sphere, felt with lead-gloved hands for the automatic and the two atomic bombs. Leaving the smashed, already glowing and crumbling wreckage of the plane, he struck out upriver.
“Checking out, sure,” he muttered. “But first I’ll find out one more answer.”
For it was upriver that he had seen the flicker on the bluff.
Strange journey. He tramped through piles of heavy dust that burned with cold violet, green, purple, yellow. He waded depressions filled with luminous gas that seared his lungs like flame. Stumbled. Rose heavily. Fell again.
The ache grew swiftly in his bones. His body was on fire. Thirst was a shrieking agony. . . . Once he looked back, saw a moving glint. Was the thing following? It didn’t matter much. He was crawling, now.
Then, when all seemed hopeless, she came to meet him.
Arthedne—the bright being of the picture and the dreams. She soared above the dark bluffs, glided down toward him on wings of gorgeous flame. The bright pinions didn’t beat, but there was a pulse of color in them, of gold and rose, mauve and saffron.
Ames dragged himself to his knees, waved. And she dropped lightly on the shining dust before him. Her wings were suddenly gone! Two tall slender things, like antennae, curved upward from her shoulders. The wings had been aflame between them.
“Ames!” Her voice was silver melody. “You have come!”
She walked quickly to him. She was tall and slim and beautiful. A tunic of woven silver clung to the curves of her body. A jeweled star gleamed from the shining band that held her golden hair.
