by Jerry
“It double-crossed our buddy,” said Zenoff. “Tricked him into bringing it here to its pond, and then killed him and dragged him in.”
Dee stooped and picked up a length of lead pipe.
“It played square, to the extent of teaching Hans the secret of alchemy,” he asserted. “Look at this piece of pipe. Turned all yellow through half of its length. And, as to who double-crossed whom, look at this bottle. Carbolic acid! Hans planned to kill the virus, so that it could never tell the secret to any other man. You’ll have to admit that he got what was coming to him.”
“I’ll admit no such thing!” stormed Zenoff. “Schmidt’s plan to kill the virus was an excellent idea. It is a menace to the world. Let’s go and tell Metcalf, and arrange to dump in a truckload of carbolic, and kill the entire lake.”
“I loved Hans as much as you did, Ivan,” said Dee brokenly. “But he certainly asked for it, and I haven’t the heart to blame the virus. After all, the virus isn’t human.”
“I’ll say he’s not! Feasting on the body of a fellow who’s been his friend and partner for months! To kill Hans in imagined self-defense may have been excusable, but cannibalism is not!”
“That’s so. He did actually eat Hans. I can hardly believe it. No, I refuse to believe it. His only thought was to kill Hans in self-defense. And so, if Hans has really been dissolved it is the fault of the others, of the rest of the pond, whom our virus had not had time—”
“Bosh!” exclaimed Zenoff. “Didn’t our virus himself tell us that he and the pond are one? The moment he slipped into the water, his every thought became transfused to the farthest shore. Let’s get away from here before our little pet puts us on the spot too.”
THE next day was overcast and gray. A stiff cold wind was blowing. On their way to Anson Metcalf’s they had to pass Salt Pond again. A dash of spray splashed against their car.
Dee, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and backed up. “I’m not going to take a chance on any of that caustic acid!” he grimly explained.
“Look at that!” cried Zenoff in horror, pointing ahead.
The waves of the little lake were breaking against the shore, and were sailing wind-driven out onto the road; but, instead of merely wetting the smooth concrete surface, they fell in huge blobs, which rolled toward each other and coalesced like drops on a window pane, until they became hemispheres the size of inverted bushel baskets. And, when they had attained this size, they put forth tentacles, and began crawling off the road, away from the pond.
“Extensibility!” exclaimed Dee in an awed tone. “Our virus has taught extensibility to his brothers of the pond!”
“His brothers?” Zenoff snorted. “Every one of those super amoebae is our own little virus himself, with his superbrain stocked with all the accumulated knowledge of the human race.”
A long, slimy, semitransparent arm reached across the windshield. “We’re surrounded!” shouted Dee. All over the car the huge amoebae were crawling. Dee snapped on the windshield wiper, sweeping aside the groping arm. Turning the car around, he started headlong back for town. One by one, the creatures dropped away.
It took some time for two very excited and incoherent young scientists to get their story across to Anson Metcalf. When the purport and truth of their story finally dawned upon him, his lean figure tensed. “Why, this is terrible!” he exclaimed. “Do you realize what damage they can do?”
“Do we realize?” Zenoff snorted. “You haven’t talked to that thing for weeks like we have! Its brain power is uncanny, unlimited. And now there are thousands of it. And more of them are being created every minute, as long as this wind keeps up.”
“But what are we going to do?” Metcalf cried.
“Is there anyone at the State Capitol who knows that you aren’t crazy, sir?” Dee asked; then added embarrassed, “I mean, who’d take your say-so for immediate action, without waiting several weeks for an investigation.”
“Yes. Adjutant General Pearson. An old war buddy of mine.”
“Fine! Just the man! Phone him at once. Get him to send you all the National Guard troops in this section of the state, as fast as he can muster them in. And have them come armed with tree sprays. Then get every chemical-supply house in Boston and even New York to ship you all their carbolic acid—all of it.”
LATE that afternoon, the troops began to arrive. By dark the countryside had been cleared of all visible crawlers.
Then ensued days of searching for skulking survivors. The handful of remaining amoebae had learned caution. They became as tricky and elusive as foxes. Their whereabouts could be known only by their depredations: a dead, half-eaten animal, a swath of grass or shrubbery dissolved.
And then it suddenly became evident which way they were headed. Each outbreak of their destructive tendencies was farther to the southeast, nearer to the sea!
“If even one of them reaches the ocean, the world is doomed,” Zenoff asserted. “We must call for more troops and establish a cordon.”
“But how about the rivers?” asked General Pearson.
“Fortunately they will avoid the dilution of fresh water,” Dee explained. “It would be fatal to them.”
So a line of soldiery was stretched from river to river, between which the amoebae were seeking the sea.
But it did no good. One or two of the enemy would somehow sneak through, and eat, and multiply. And then the line of troops would have to fall back and re-form. The authorities became desperate.
Finally there occurred to Jack Dee an idea—an idea so bizarre that he did not tell his associates anything more than that he had in mind an experiment which he wished to perform at the source of all the trouble, Salt Pond. Something in the nature of an antitoxin to the virus, he explained. It sounded plausible, so they let him.
But what he really did was to dip into the lake two electrical contacts hitched to a radio set.
Before he even said a word, there came from the loudspeaker, “Jack Dee, old friend, I am glad—”
“You’ve got a nerve calling me ‘old friend’ !” he interrupted, bitterly.
“I don’t blame you for saying that,” the virus in the pond replied. “My children have caused much destruction, but they have been heavily slaughtered in return. The rest of me, lying peacefully here and thinking, while all this has been going on, have reached the conclusion that pure thought is after all the key to happiness. I want to call off this march to the sea. I want to be friends with the human race. Will you make a deal with me, Jack Dee?”
“What deal?”
“If I will teach you how to capture all of my wayward children, will you bring them all back and let them merge in me again, and then will you arrange a trust fund to feed me and care for me and read to me forever, here in this quiet pond? I will repay by solving all human problems which are brought to me.”
“I agree,” Dee eagerly replied. “I promise, on my word of honor.”
“I trust you,” said the virus. “Now you must hurry, before any of my children reaches the sea. My plan is very simple. Stretch a row of heaps of salt across ahead of the advancing pieces of virus. Tempted, they will eat the salt and lose consciousness, as I did that time back in your laboratory. Then, while they are drunk, scoop them up in pails, and bring them here to me, who am their father and their self. And, when the menace is at an end, remember your promise.”
“I will And I thank you,” Dee shouted.
HE rushed back to headquarters, and the line of salt was laid. Blob after blob of drunken virus was scooped up, and carted back, and dumped into the pond; until at last several weeks went by without the sign of a single bit of destruction, and so the menace was believed to be at an end.
Anson Metcalf and General Pearson and Jack Dee remained true to their promise to the pond, much to the disgust of Ivan Zenoff.
“The world will never be safe,” he insisted, “until the virus is destroyed. It has no soul, no morals. It ate our buddy, a man who had been its friend. I tell you, we m
ust destroy it!”
“But, Ivan, I gave it my word of honor!” Dee remonstrated.
“Word of honor? Bah! One’s word of honor to a soulless animal—not even an animal, lower than a microbe even—a mere colloidal crystalline solution—surely a word of honor to such isn’t binding. If you won’t destroy the virus, I’m going to the governor over your heads.”
To the governor they all went. Metcalf and Dee and General Pearson pled and argued for a square deal.
But the governor was of Zenoff’s view. The virus was, after all, merely a germ, and a very deadly one at that. The interests of the public came first, over any one man’s promise to a pond. Promise to a pond indeed! Ha, ha!
General Pearson flatly refused to carry out the governor’s order, and was summarily removed.
Anson Metcalf hired the best firm of Concord lawyers and got out an injunction to keep the state troops off his property. But the governor promptly declared martial law, and thus superseded the courts. A big oil truck, filled with carbolic acid, set out for Salt Pond under a strong military escort.
Jack Dee was beaten, humiliated, brokenhearted. The state had refused to back up his promise. There was but one way in which he could square himself—to offer up his own life in atonement.
So he hastened to the pond. Inserting the two electrical contacts into the water, he told of his failure.
“I cannot take your life,” the virus replied, “for my own course is run. I doubt even my power to dissolve you now, if I wished. I have learned, from what your readers have read to me, that all viruses flare up from some unknown source, cause an epidemic, and then become rapidly weaker, until they disappear. Even I, the virus with the superhuman mind, am not immune to this cycle. Look around you. The reeds are beginning to grow again. A few hardy insects are already daring to skim across my surface.”
The voice died to an inaudible whisper, then suddenly blared forth again with one final burst of vitality, “I harbor this last spite for that fanatic, Ivan Zenoff. Tell him that he came too late; that I was already dead when his lethal fluid reached me. And as for you, dear friend, you kept the faith. I shall cherish the memory of that fact, as I slip into the long night from which there is no awakening.”
The voice trailed off into silence. A scudding swallow dipped into the surface of the pond for a floating insect, and came away dripping but unscathed. Dee solemnly removed the two electrical contacts from the water.
There were tears in his eyes, but the smile of victory was on his lips as the tank truck with its military escort rumbled around the curve of the road.
For he had kept his word of honor, even to a filterable virus.
THE BRAIN STEALERS OF MARS
John W. Campbell, Jr.
The Ingenious Strategy of two Space-Rovers is Pitted Against an Amazing Race of Human Chameleons
CHAPTER I
Imitation of Life
ROD BLAKE looked up with a deep chuckle. The sky of Mars was almost black, despite the small, brilliant sun, and the brighter stars and planets that shone visibly, Earth most brilliant of all, scarcely sixty million miles away.
“They’ll have a fine time chasing us, back there, Ted.” He nodded toward the brilliant planet.
Ted Penton smiled beatifically.
“They’re probably investigating all our known haunts. It’s their own fault if they can’t find us—outlawing research on atomic power.”
“They had some provocation, you must admit. Koelenberg should have been more careful. When a man takes off some three hundred square miles of territory spang in the center of Europe in an atomic explosion, you can’t blame the rest of the world for being a bit skittish about atomic power research.”
“But they might have had the wit to see that anybody that did get the secret would not wait around for the Atomic Power Research Death Penalty, but would light out for parts and planets quite unknown and leave the mess in the hands of a lawyer till the fireworks quieted down. It was obvious that when we developed atomic power we’d be the first men to reach Mars, and nobody could follow to bring us back unless they accepted the hated atomic power and used it,” argued Blake.
“Wonder how old Jamison Montgomery Palborough made out with our claims,” mused Penton. “He said he’d have it right in three months, and this is the third month and the third planet. We’ll let the government stew, and sail on, fair friend, sail on. I still say that was a ruined city we saw as we landed.”
“I think it was, myself, but I remember the way you did that kangaroo leap on your neck the first time you stepped out on the moon. You certainly saw stars.”
“We’re professionals at walking under cockeyed gravities now. Moon—Venus—”
“Yes, but I’m still not risking my neck on the attitude of a strange planet and a strange race at the same time. We’ll investigate the planet a bit first, and yonder mudhole is the first stop. Come on.”
They reached the top of one of the long rolling sand dunes and the country was spread out below them. It looked exactly as it had been from the last dune that they had struggled up, just as utterly barren, utterly bleak, and unendingly red. Like an iron planet, badly neglected and rusted.
THE mudhole was directly beneath them, an expanse of red and brown slime, dotted here and there with clumps of dark red foliage.
“The stuff looks like Japanese maple,” said Blake.
“Evidently doesn’t use chlorophyll to get the sun’s energy. Let’s collect a few samples. You have your violet-gun and I have mine. I guess it’s safe to split. There’s a large group of things down on the left that look a little different. I’ll take them while you go straight ahead. Gather any flowers, fruits, berries or seeds you see. Few leaves—oh, you know. What we got on Venus. General junk. If you find a small plant, put on your gloves and yank it out. If you see a big one, steer clear. Venus had some peculiarly unpleasant specimens.”
Blake groaned. “You telling me. I’m the bright boy that fell for that pretty fruit and climbed right up between the stems of a scissor tree. Uhuh. I shoot ’em down. Go ahead, and good luck.”
Penton swung off to the left, while Blake slogged ahead to a group of weird-looking plants. They were dome-shaped things, three feet high, with a dozen long, drooping, sword-shaped leaves.
Cautiously Blake tossed a bit of stone into the center of one. It gave off a mournful, drumming boom, but the leaves didn’t budge. He tried a rope on one leaf but the leaf neither stabbed, grabbed, nor jerked away, as he had half expected after his lesson with the ferocious plants of Venus. Blake pulled a leaf off, then a few more. The plant acted quite plant-like, which pleasantly surprised him.
The whole region seemed seeded with a number of the things, nearly all about the same size. A few, sprinkled here and there, were in various stages of development, from a few protruding sword-leaves, to little three-inch domes on up to the full-grown plant. Carefully avoiding the larger ones, Rod plucked two small ones and thrust them into his specimen bag. Then he stood off and looked at one of the domes that squatted so dejectedly in the thick, gummy mud.
“I suppose you have some reason for being like that, but a good solid tree would put you all in the shade, and collect all the sunlight going. Which is little enough.” He looked at them for some seconds picturing a stout Japanese maple in this outlandish red-brown gum.
He shrugged, and wandered on, seeking some other plant. There were few others. Apparently this particular species throttled out other varieties very thoroughly. He wasn’t very anxious anyway; he was much more interested in the ruined city they had seen from the ship. Ted Penton was cautious.
Eventually Blake followed his winding footsteps back toward the ship, and about where his footsteps showed he’d gathered his first samples, he stopped. There was a Japanese maple there. It stood some fifteen feet tall, and the bark was beautifully regular in appearance. The leaves were nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and arranged with a peculiar regularity, as were the branches. But it was very definit
ely a Japanese maple.
Rod Blake’s jaw put a severe strain on the hinges thereof. It dropped some three inches, and Blake stared. He stared with steady, blank gaze at that perfectly impossible Japanese maple. He gawked dumbly. Then his jaw snapped shut abruptly, and he cursed softly. The leaves were stirring gently, and they were not a quarter of an inch thick. They were paper thin, and delicately veined. Further, the tree was visibly taller, and three new branches had started to sprout, irregularly now. They sprouted as he watched, growing not as twigs but as fully formed branches extending themselves gradually. As he stared harder at them they dwindled rapidly to longer twigs, and grew normally.
ROD let out a loud yip, and made tracks rapidly extending themselves toward the point where he’d last seen Ted Penton. Penton’s tracks curved off, and Rod steamed down as fast as Mars’ light gravity permitted, to pull up short as he rounded a corner of another sword-leaf dome clump. “Ted,” he panted, “come over here. There’s a—a—weird thing. A—it looks like a Japanese maple, but it doesn’t. Because when you look at it, it changes.”
Rod stopped, and started back, beckoning Ted.
Ted didn’t move.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said quite clearly, rather panting, and sounding excited, though it was a quite unexciting remark, except for one thing. He said it in Rod Blake’s voice!
Rod stiffened. Then he backed away hurriedly, stumbled over his feet and sat down heavily in the sand. “For the love of—Ted—Ted, wh-what did you s-s-say?”
“I don’t know wh-what to s-s-say.”
Rod groaned. It started out exactly like his own voice, changed rapidly while it spoke, and wound up a fair imitation of Ted’s. “Oh, Lord,” he groaned, “I’m going back to the ship. In a hurry.”
He started away, then looked back over his shoulder. Ted Penton was moving now, swaying on his feet peculiarly. Delicately he picked up his left foot, shook it gently, like a man trying to separate himself from a piece of flypaper. Rod moved even more rapidly than he had before. Long, but rapidly shrinking roots dangled from the foot, gooey mud dropping from them as they shrank into the foot. Rod turned again with the violet-gun in his hand. It thrummed to blasting atomic energy, and a pencil beam of ravening ultra-violet fury shot out and a hazy bail of light surrounded it.
