Four Astounding Novellas

by Nat Schachner

  His quick eye caught an eddy of movement through the last section of marching men, a wave that rippled toward him to the accompaniment of angry noises. It was Hollis, coming through on the run, hatless, panting.

  “What’s the matter?” Jordan asked quickly. His first thought was that his prisoners had escaped.

  “Wentworth!”

  Jordan groaned. “You mean—”

  “I know where he is. Patrolman Caffrey discovered him. It’s in the Bronx, on Southern Boulevard.”

  The commissioner jerked forward. His eyes flamed. The last menace to his bid for world dominion would soon be in his hands.

  “Quick!” He spoke rapidly. “Grab five squad cars, take a company of men. We’re going up there to nab him.”

  “But, chief, you can’t go,” Hollis protested. “The Bluebands will be entraining in half an hour.”

  Jordan swore. Hollis was right. Another limitation to the gift. Once out of his personal influence, there was no telling what the army might do in the face of opposition, of other forces. Perhaps some one else, unknown to him, also was in possession of the secret power.

  “But, damn it!” he cried. “Unless I go along, they’ll never be able to take Wentworth. He knows what it’s all about.”

  Then Hollis had a brilliant idea. “Why not shoot right down to the Tombs and talk to Marshall? I’m sure you can convince him to play along with you. It’ll be to his advantage. He can take care of Wentworth. Afterward you should be able to handle Marshall.”

  Jordan’s face cleared at once. He shook his secretary’s hand enthusiastically.

  “Hollis, you have brains. Hold a company to follow him after Wentworth. I’m on my way.”

  Ten minutes later Jordan was in Anthony Marshall’s cell, talking earnestly.

  The middle-aged clubman had been indignant, surprised, frightfully scared, all in turn. The sudden, unexplained arrest, the summary incarceration, broke his spirit. He tried to talk to his lone jailer, to persuade him to let him out, but the man was deaf, couldn’t even see the movement of his lips through the bars. Breakfast was silently thrust into the cell. He looked at the coarse food and shuddered. He did not eat it.

  Jordan said: “I’m giving you a break, Marshall. Refuse, and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do on this earth.”

  Tony Marshall had no thought of refusing. “I’ll do anything,” he assented eagerly. “But what? I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll tell you.” Jordan had decided on his story. “A scientist friend of mine stumbled on the secret of complete hypnotism. He experimented on me. It took. Then he tried it out in the street, on a few people, from a distance. You were one of them. Because it wasn’t under laboratory conditions the power he gave you was much weaker than mine. You understand?”

  Tony nodded weakly. With Jordan’s fierce gaze bent upon him, and the calamitous situation he was in, it seemed quite probable.

  Satisfied, Jordan continued: “My friend died. Certain things happened. More are on their way. I rounded up all the people he had experimented on, except one. That one, a chap named Craig Wentworth, got away. He knows the secret, is hunting for the others himself. He wants to operate on them, make permanent imbeciles of them for life, so he can be the only one in the field.”

  Marshall’s gasp of horror was music.

  “I’ve located him finally. I’d go for him myself, but other matters are waiting. Here’s your chance, Marshall. Get him; bind, gag, and blindfold him, and bring him to me, and you’re made. I’ll appoint you my chief assistant; together we’ll rule the country. If you don’t—”

  “I’ll do it, Mr. Commissioner!” Tony cried eagerly.

  “O.K. A company of soldiers will go with you. Now this is what you have to do.”

  Craig Wentworth was stumped. He stared at the almost complete bit of apparatus, frowning, his brow corrugated into innumerable tiny wrinkles.

  “What’s the matter, Craig?” Margaret asked anxiously.

  He groaned. “The very last item, and I can’t seem to make it click. Maybe you can help, Dr. Knopf. It’s more a physiological problem than a physical.”

  It was the question of the last step; the hitching of the apparatus in some way to the queer, other-universe globule radiating away inside the brain.

  Dr. Knopf thought deeply. “I wouldn’t chance connecting it there. We know nothing about its constitution—disaster might be the result. But I do know about the pineal body, and I can guess why the globule was connected to that particular organ. If my theory is correct, you can achieve the same result by cutting your little machine in there.”

  Wentworth shouted: “We’ll do it, then! That simplifies matters. Just a few more wires and we’re through.”

  Margaret roused. “You mean you’re going to insert that thing into your brain?”

  “Not all of it. Just the wires. The apparatus itself will be strapped to my chest.”

  She was horrified. “That means an operation; danger. I won’t have it, I tell you!” Her bosom heaved, she was panting.

  Wentworth grinned down at her. “Dr. Knopf is a good doctor. He’ll do it in a jiffy, like snatching out a tonsil. Don’t worry. Let’s get started.”

  But there was no further starting just then.

  The door swung open with a crash. Wentworth whirled, saw the flood of bluebanded men pouring in like a resistless tide. In the split second left him, he recognized their leader. He was Anthony Marshall.

  He opened his mouth to yell an order, a command, compelling these men under his will. It was too late.

  The foremost were upon him, gun butts swinging. He tried to dodge, swerved, saw Knopf and Margaret go down under a huddle of men, cried “Stop!” and crashed headlong into a shower of explosive stars. The floor heaved once, and subsided into dead blackness.

  Washington was amazed. As yet there was no panic. That would come later. The president and his cabinet were in session. With them was General Collins, the head of the American forces.

  “I can’t quite understand it, gentlemen,” the president acknowledged. “It’s incredible. A revolt against the United States to start just like that, without warning, without preliminaries, without rhyme or reason.”

  “Stranger things have happened all through history,” said the secretary of state quietly. He turned to the chief of the secret service. “What information have you on it, Jones?”

  “Little enough,” he said. “Got a hundred men in New York and only one came through with a report, some twenty minutes ago. Claimed he had no warning. Early this morning the police and National Guard took possession, closed all avenues of escape. He managed finally to sneak through the lines into Westchester, and got to a phone. Says it seems to be headed by the police commissioner himself, a man named Alfred Jordan. Talk is that the mayor of the city and the governor of the State are backing him.”

  The president frowned. “It’s unheard of. A city and a State defying the whole country. Sounds like comic opera. The mayor I don’t know personally—he’s just a time-serving politician. But the governor is a personal friend of mine, a man of intelligence. How did he get mixed up in this?”

  “There’s something in back of this,” observed the secretary of state. “We’ll have trouble, I’m afraid.”

  The general roused himself. “Nonsense. The president is right. It is comic opera. I’ve mobilized all the regular-army units in a radius of two hundred miles. They’re entraining now. Within three hours I’ll have twenty thousand men to meet the rebels.”

  “They have fifty thousand,” the secretary of war interjected.

  “My men are trained soldiers,” the general said rather contemptuously. “They’ll go through them like a hurricane.” He looked at the map stretched out before him on the table. “They’ll contact somewhere around Wilmington. I’ve already ordered General Harper there to take command. He’s an excellent soldier.”

  The president’s private telephone rang. He reached ou
t and picked up the receiver.

  “Yes; it’s the president. Who? Who wants to talk to me? Alfred Jordan the First, Commander of the Bluebands. The man is crazy. What’s that, he insists?”

  The president’s ordinarily kindly features set in grim hard lines. “Very well, put him on.”

  The secretary of state reached over and did a surprising thing. He unceremoniously jerked the receiver away from the president’s ear, clapped it to his own. He stopped the angry exclamation of the startled chief executive with an upraised hand.

  “Let me handle this call, please,” he said quietly. “I think it’s going to be dangerous to the man on the receiving end.”

  Jones, the secret-service man, acted quickly. He in turn tore the receiver away, lifted it.

  “If it’s danger, that’s my job,” he said. “Hello, hello—yes; this is the president talking. What do you want? Oh, you don’t recognize the voice? Well, I have a bad cold.”

  There was a long silence; evidently Jordan at the other end was saying things. The breathless assemblage could see the drops of perspiration start up on Jones’ forehead, the strange rigidity that overcame his features.

  “Yes, sir, Commander Jordan,” he said finally. His voice was respectful. “I’ll do that, at once, sir.”

  Jones turned and stared straight in front of him. “He wishes to talk to the president. He has an important message. I would strongly advise, sir, that you speak to him.”

  The president, his mind a trifle beclouded by the anxiety of the situation, had not noticed any untoward change in the head of the secret service. “All right,” he said, “I’ll talk to the madman.”

  The secretary of state caught his arm in time. “Don’t you see, Mr. President,” he cried, “how right I was? Look at Jones.”

  That focused attention. Jones was rigid, spoke almost like a wound-up mechanism.

  “Nothing the matter with me. Commander Jordan is a great man. You must listen to him. Here!” He moved suddenly, thrust the receiver forcibly against the astounded president’s ear, shouted hoarsely into the mouthpiece.

  “Talk to him now, commander. He’s on.”

  The secretary of state was on his feet like a flash and lunged. He caught Jones off balance, sent him crashing against the table. In the same movement, the secretary scooped up the receiver, ripped violently. The cord tore loose. The connection went dead.

  Every one was on his feet now. There was hubbub, excitement. The secret-service chief righted himself, and his hand went to his pocket.

  “Grab him!” shouted the secretary of state. “He’s going to shoot.”

  General Collins pinioned his arms as the door guard rushed in. The gun was quickly removed, and Jones held panting, helpless, glaring.

  “There’s the answer,” said the secretary of state, pointing to the renegade. “I knew there was something smelly about the whole revolt, about that telephone call. The man Jordan is a hypnotist, of supernormal powers. He has hypnotized a whole city into following him. He just did the same with Jones over the phone. He would have done the same with you, Mr. President, had you answered the call, and the sound of his voice reached you.”

  The president acted decisively. “Remove Jones to a hospital, give him the best of care, but guard him closely, day and night. Have doctors and psychologists examine him, try to get him out of his state. Have them report to us at once.”

  Within two hours the report was duly rendered, signed by the foremost medical men in Washington.

  “We find,” it read, “that Emmet Jones is suffering from a strange form of induced hypnosis. Contrary to the ordinary states, he is absolutely normal in every particular—pulse, respiration, blood pressure, processes of thought and action, except in an expressed and fanatic belief in one Alfred Jordan and an avowed intention to kidnap or kill the President of the United States. All efforts to rid him of his induced complex have thus far been unavailing. Further reports will follow.”

  But by the time the message was in the hands of the cabinet, it attracted only cursory attention. Other and far more alarming news had come through.

  VII.

  Battle was joined a few miles north of Wilmington. At that point the troop trains commandeered by Jordan were compelled to halt. The first contingents of the regular army had torn up the tracks.

  The assorted motley of Bluebands detrained at once, drew up in a semblance of battle array. The tanks were hauled off flat cars, so was the motorized artillery.

  The scouting party of regulars dropped a few shots among them to harass the unloading, and withdrew to the main body, resting behind a line of shallow, hastily dug trenches.

  Jordan, his step firm, his ego impossibly inflated, entered an inclosed armored car. On the steel-plated top protruded a series of tiny cones. The tanks lined up on either side. In the rear the artillery swung into position, ammunition dumps were set up. Officers of the National Guard, artillery corps, plotted parabolas and arcs of fire.

  A salvo was fired. It sailed high over the regulars’ entrenchments. It took time to plot correction data. In the meantime the regulars returned the favor. The first burst smacked with earth-shattering concussion not a hundred yards in front. Flying clods and bits of shrapnel burst among them. Three men were killed outright, a number wounded.

  The Bluebands were ready now. They responded with all guns. This time they were short, by three hundred yards. Almost on the heels of the detonations came the echoing answer. It came on with the roar of a thousand express trains. It crashed into the middle ranks, tearing great gaps in the compact masses.

  “We’re licked if we stay here,” said Hollis. “Our artillery is no match for theirs.”

  Jordan heaved out of the car, in full sight of all his men.

  “We attack at once!” he shouted. “We are stronger than the enemy; they can’t stop us. There must be no retreat. Forward, on to victory!”

  They cheered, not wildly, not enthusiastically, but with a strange, deadly monotone. Then they surged forward.

  Jordan was in the car again. The line of tanks lumbered over the uneven terrain. The defending artillery lessened its range, smashed again and again into the attacking force. But the ranks closed up and went on, under driving compulsion. Terror was not in them, nothing but a hypnotic setness of purpose. Only death or crippling wounds could stop them.

  At five hundred yards the entrenched infantry opened up, with concerted rifle blasts and the deadly rat-a-tat of machine guns. The field was reaped by an invisible scythe. Men slipped and staggered in the blood of their fellows, and went on. Whole companies were wiped out of existence; others took their places. A quarter of the tanks were disabled; the others rumbled on.

  Then the trenches vomited forth men, line after line of them. A great cheer swept their ranks. They came forward on the double-quick, in open array. The sun spattered dazzlingly on leveled bayonets. The defending army was attacking.

  “We’ll never hold them, sir,” said Hollis.

  Jordan’s face was exalted with passion. He was beyond doubt of his powers. He forked a tiny switch, and spoke in normal, ordinary, everyday tones.

  Outside, a volume of sound blasted from the tiny cones on the top of the car—sounds that were overpowering in their mightiness, yet clear as any bell, every syllable separate and distinct. It poured forth, met and muted the hellish concussion of noise inherent in gunfire and human shoutings. It overwhelmed the battle, seethed artillery itself down to a forgotten whisper. All the earth seemed to be waiting, listening in terrified silence.

  “Soldiers of the United States army, stop; cease fighting! It is I who command you, your leader, Alfred Jordan the First, Dictator of the United States. Drop your arms at once, surrender; yield to my will in all things!”

  The blast of sound penetrated to the last ranks, to the entrenched artillery.

  The reaction was remarkable, instantaneous. The attacking forces paused almost in mid-stride, held rigid by indescribable forces. The weapons
, deadly in intent, dropped from unresisting fingers. Their hands moved slowly up into the air, in token of surrender. Gunners, about to press electrical connections that would fire the belching monsters, paused bewildered, moved hands back to sides. The battle was over. At the moment of victory, the regular army had succumbed to a force they did not even recognize.

  Alfred Jordan had won his first great victory. He had proved his powers on the largest scale. Already he envisaged himself the dictator of the Earth, already he sighed in anticipation, because, like Alexander, he would soon have no more worlds to conquer.

  “Wonderful!” breathed Hollis, so excited he could hardly form syllables. “That loud-speaker system is—”

  “A matter of being prepared. Rounded up every sound engineer in New York; gave them three days to evolve a super-sound magnifier. They did it.”

  Within two hours the victorious Bluebands were in Washington; their original depleted forces augmented by the regular army that had been sent out to oppose them. Even a squadron of planes, fast bombers, could not zoom high enough to escape the tremendously enlarged sound of Jordan’s voice. Like so many harmless birds, they settled meekly to the ground, and their pilots turned into henchmen of the new dictator.

  Washington was defenseless. The president and his cabinet fled hastily. So did members of Congress, and all officialdom. The city was in a state of terror. Refugees blocked all roads leading south. Those who could not escape cowered in their cellars, fearing the worst.

  But Jordan, in spite of his megalomania, was no fool. He gave strict orders that there were to be no excesses; that discipline was to remain intact; that no inhabitants or their property were to be in any wise disturbed. He needed Washington whole for his purposes.

  And, having the most unusual army in the world, one that was wholly and completely subservient to the will of its commander, there were no infractions.