by Earl
“Still I think you’re a genius,” said Vincent, sweeping her into his arms. “How do you like being a superman—or rather, a superwoman?”
Dora wrinkled her nose in mock distaste. “I could pass it up any time. But I guess I’ll never catch up with you. First I had one brain and you ten—now I have ten, and you have a hundred! It’s my fate, I guess, to be several brains behind all the time——”
The rest was squeezed out of her by Vincent’s bearlike hug. “Come on, let’s pass the rest of the evening brainlessly, just for a change. To-morrow—we’ll get down to some earnest work.”
STILL very much in love, they sauntered for a moment out on the roof of their combined laboratory and home. In the magic wash of moonlight, the brooding Sahara Desert spread all around them. But it was not desert in the immediate vicinity. All around lay the geometrical pattern of a small city—a city built in three months in the heart of the great African desert.
It had been planned and built by Renolf at the time of his dictatorship, as the Benefactor. Only the councilors had known that he wished the Earth to be made safe against invasion from space. It had been his plan to construct powerful defensive armament in the Sahara, and then to spread it all over the Earth. Now it was to be different. It was to be a campaign of offense.
All that the world at large knew of the secret doings in the Dark Continent was that the Supreme Council had daily conscripted dozens of men and immense quantities of supplies and apparatus and shipped them there. All the rumors afloat—and some of them were wild indeed—fell far short of hitting upon what was really being done.
The two humans on the roof felt a chill as they gazed upon a huge, amber moon which pushed itself above the horizon, despite the tropical heat. It was a lovers’ moon, magnificently beautiful in a soft, black sky set with flaming star points. But to them it was a dreadful reminder of impending doom, and the crater Tycho, with its radiating lines—it was like the evil eye, casting a spell on Earth.
“The Spawn of Eternal Thought!” breathed Dora, with a strange catch to her voice. “All this”—she waved her hand to include the buildings around them—“to fight a single being who uses not a stick or stone to protect itself. Oh, Vincent, what if we should fail?”
“We can’t! Or we mustn’t!” The man’s voice was grim. “Even if we must take that last, desperate chance!”
“You mean——”
“I mean have two charges ready. The first, a thousand tons of sand. The second—a million tons! I’m having the projector built to take safely that second-charge. But its recoil is going to give the Earth an awful jolt—maybe even throw it off its orbit. That’s why I’m hoping the first shot will do the trick.”
“But how will you know when and if to shoot the second?”
“One of the ultra-super-Renolf’s little brain children. To leave out technicalities, an infinitely sensitive cosmic-ray set will signal—ring a bell—if the first charge bounces off. The first charge will—if it doesn’t smash the being’s screen flat—at least tend to flatten it a measurable amount. The cosmic-ray unit will tell us if it does. If the being’s screen succumbs, the unit automatically cuts out, and the signal will not ring. Otherwise it will, and four seconds later the million-ton charge will blast up there.”
“We’re taking an awful chance,” said Dora. “I looked over the recoil equation on it. It gives me the creeps. Looks too much like the momentum-velocity product of Earth.”
“I know,” said Renolf. “But it’s the only way. If we try a succession of gradually larger charges, the alien being would skip as quick as that and come at us from behind like a raging lion. Our only little chance is to smash him flat in one swift stroke, before he has a chance to guess what’s coming at him. And since I don’t know how powerful his screen is, I must use the greatest single force at our disposal, even at the risk of another danger as a result.”
“How about the Moon itself?” asked Dora. “Will even the first charge throw it off it’s orbit? I imagine the second must for sure.”
“That I can’t say,” mused Vincent. “You see, I can’t figure the absorption value of the being’s screen. It may neutralize, by its tremendous resiliency, a great part of the charge, first or second. But small worry—what happens to the Moon. If only I could cancel part of the recoil here on Earth—that would be a load off my mind.”
AND it was the recoil angle of the great project that concerned the Supreme Council more than anything. Renolf made great strides with the projector, but the problem of reaction was not so easy.
“Can’t do anything about it,” he bluntly told three councilors who had left their manifold duties for a day to visit him in the Sahara. “I worked on it for a week. I have come to the conclusion that it would take a dozen men with thousand-brain units to devise a suitable bracing system, with a force beam anchored to the Sun. But you can’t even have men with thousand-brain units. Their minds would burn out. I myself can wear the hundred-brain head-band only two hours out of twenty-four, else I should go insane. No, Earth will have to take her chances. You, of course, will have to follow my plan and have all coastal cities evacuated at the time of firing.”
“What will we tell them?” wailed a councilor. “Millions of people to be moved inland—they will probably riot.”
“Tell them sea serpents are rising out of the ocean and heading for attack,” said Renolf ironically. The councilors looked shocked and hurt. Then they grinned weakly, forgiving him. A man with the burden he carried could not be expected to be nerveless. Nor always genial.
And Renolf’s nerves were becoming raw and frayed. Months of hard work, ceaseless experimentation—they took their toll. Yet he refused to slacken up, fearing that the alien being might now and then be in the habit of spying on human activity out of curiosity. It would not do for the enemy to catch them in the midst of their unfinished project.
The Menace had said: “Any instant I may annihilate you.” Renolf’s only consolation was in knowing that an “instant” to the alien being was perhaps years to Earthly conception.
Dora, despite the superhuman ability given her by the ten-brain unit, was hard put to it to keep astride the demon of swiftness which Renolf was. For two hours each day he would rattle off a steady stream of formulae and test results, as she madly dashed from one experiment to another. Dora was secretary, assistant, and interpreter all in one.
Each day, after their two-hour flurry of activity, they would rearrange their results and pass them out to a huge staff of technicians and engineers. These men, in turn commanding small armies of help, would turn out material results from the reams of equations. It was the most colossal cooperative system ever organized on Earth. In efficiency it ranked with the smooth working of a termitary, or ant hill. What might have taken industrialized science a century to develop, the city on the Sahara brought to its last stages in less than a year.
Perhaps the Sphinx—had it not been too far north to see—might have cracked its rigid expression of somnolence at the astounding creation which budded from the desert sands. A thing of metal, the projector which was to hurl the unleashed forces of tons of sand molecules Moonward, reared ten miles into the sky. It was as enormous in comparison to anything else man-made, as Renolf was to any of his fellowmen in mentality. It was incredible—like an escalator in a wasp nest, an electric light in a Stone-Age man’s cave. It was far beyond anything humanity had ever before erected. Perhaps, taking into account its great purpose, it was above and beyond anything intelligent life had ever before created in the history of the solar system.
IT WAS, in its simplicity, a straight metal cylinder with a polished interior of chromium, its end rearing gauntly into the lower stratosphere from a circular cement base a mile in diameter. It was set rigidly and could point to the Moon—and to Tycho—only at a predestined time.
Then, when the zero moment came, a thousand giant disintegrator tubes would play their fierce radiations on a thousand tons of sand and send an inconceivable b
eam of force toward the Moon at the speed of light.
It was to be progressive disintegration—the thousand spots affected reacting instantaneously on the whole—as the spark ignition of a gas cylinder, or the detonation of a charge of explosive. And if the first charge did not crack the alien being’s screen, the second would be sent—the macrocosmic energy of a million tons of matter!
Renolf, of course, had had to take into account the relative motions of the Earth and Moon. The beam, at the distance of the Moon, would have an effective area forty miles in diameter—twice the width of the being’s screen. The second charge—which could not reach its objective sooner than four seconds after the first—would have the fulcrum of its effective nucleus displaced some fifteen hundred feet, but would still safely include all of the enemy’s territory. Basically, it was as simple as that, taking for granted the production of the energy beam. But the meticulous aiming of the beam was a Herculean task in itself.
All scheduled construction was finished a month ahead of the date of firing. Renolf and Dora—and a small staff of technicians—spent most of that month attuning the Cyclopean machine’s reflectors. Displaying an ingeniousness that left the scientists gasping, Renolf showed how his key reflector was to aim the beam.
This was not to be done by the long sky-stabbing tube—as a cannon muzzle determines the flight of a shell—for it was merely a shield to protect the Earth from harmful radiations. The actual precise aiming was to be done at the start, with an immense faceted reflector set below the suspended sand charge.
The second and much larger sand charge—distributed in a thousand separate containers circularly between the great disintegrator tubes—was out of range of the rays as long as the first charge was there. But should the automatic cosmic-ray set-up signal back, the ray tubes would again flash for an instant their catalytic energy. And, unhindered by the focal obstruction, this time the beams would bore on and simultaneously set off the thousand secondary charges.
Of course, the multiple second charge would completely disintegrate the firing chamber, but only after it had served its purpose. Renolf allowed himself only one second to set the key reflector after the signal. Even then he feared, secretly, that the Spawn might have time to build a greater screen, should the first charge fail. It might be that the Spawn, feeling the shock of the first assault, would instantaneously throw around itself a screen adamant to any known force, or else whisk itself away with lightning speed. Renolf wished he could lash out at the alien being from close—from a space ship. But no space ship could be built to withstand the recoil, or even carry the equipment.
He wished too that he might adapt his fourth-dimensional infinite velocity principle to the beam—that space-time warping form of energy which had given him instant contact with his ten-brain unit, even when he, wearing the receptor headband, had been as far away as Saturn. But that would have taken years of work. It was like trying to extend the muzzle velocity of a rifle to its farthest range.
“WELL,” said Renolf the day before the date of firing, sighing heavily, “technically we are assured of success. Actually it is in the hands of fate, for, after all, we are dealing with an almost absolutely unknown problem.
The being may be, as he claims, a vortex of pure thought energy. In that case, our beam will simply pass through without effect. Like light going through clear air. But if the Spawn has some slight connection to the material universe as we know it—even if but a skeleton of energy patterns known to our physics—the titanic club of force we are sending to him will rip him into scattered shreds of radiation.
If the Spawn has a core of material molecules, or a nerve network of static energy, or even a “skin” of confined etheric radiation—he will succumb. If not—if he is composed purely of an alien system of intangible energies—then we cannot touch him!”
XIV.
AND on that depended the fate of a great civilization. Not only of Earth’s civilization, but of those yet to be born on Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Already eight great races of intelligent life had been wiped out ruthlessly by the Spawn of Eternal Thought. Were the remaining four of the solar system to reach that frustrated climax in their evolutionary rise?
The day dawned cold and clear. Late in the afternoon a full Moon leaped above the horizon and climbed steadily into a cloudless sky. Millions of eyes all over the Earth looked at it casually, little knowing that it held a great secret of potential doom, for the Council’s campaign of secrecy had kept the truth from the masses.
Millions had been moved from all seaboards over the entire world. Millions had refused to leave their homes, scoffing that a mysterious tidal wave was to sweep over all the oceans. The Council had cajoled and threatened, but had finally left them unmolested, for there was not time enough to begin a forcible evacuation of all cities within a hundred miles of ocean seaboards. It was plain that Earth was to pay for her freedom from the alien menace with many unfortunate lives.
The city on the Sahara was completely deserted. The Gargantuan projector was unattended by a single human soul. Five hundred miles away, in a secret establishment on the Nile, Renolf and Dora stood before the master control board. Dozens of high officials were in the other rooms of the building.
Two hours before the moment of firing, Renolf donned his complex head-band, giving him the lightning perceptions and mental activity of a hundred brains. At the same time Dora snapped the catch switches of her ten-brain unit. Then Renolf began a careful resume of what their task would be. To Dora was allotted the dozen controls which would keep the giant dynamos feeding their tremendous power to the disintegrator tubes as they warmed up. Renolf himself would handle the three master dials which controlled the key reflector and its elaborate system of lenses.
The room they were in had but one window through which they could see the tropical Moon climbing to zenith. But they would not have time to look at the Moon at the last minute. Dozens of ingenious instruments—far more accurate than human vision—would be their eyes.
RENOLF finished repeating his instructions for the third time. It was but five minutes before the great moment. Dora looked at him searchingly. His face, beneath its superimposed look of cosmic wisdom, showed haggard and uneasy. The steady, superhuman work had sapped his strength.
The man stared back, breathing heavily. Something flashed between them. Not the undertsanding of two superminds—two multiple brains. But the subtle affinity of two souls mated eternally. Then, as one, they took a last look upon the undimmed tropical Moon, now almost in position overhead.
How beautiful it was; how innocentlooking in its virgin whiteness! Yet there at Tycho, in the center of radiating white lines, crouched an ageless menace, waiting like a beast of prey. Waiting as an eagle might for the first tremulous flight of a dove, so that it could devour it before it became strong and swift. Those other civilizations—those of ravaged Titan and Ganymede and Mercury—they had been destroyed before they had reached full maturity. This was to be their avengement—by a sister race of the same Sun.
Renolf turned suddenly from the window and watched the chronometer, whose subdued tickings marked the passing of sidereal seconds, with an error no greater than a millionth of one second unit. When it lacked but three minutes of the time, he waved a hand. Dora promptly manipulated her controls. Dial needles quivered and crept swiftly along numbered scales. Five hundred miles away a thousand ionic grids were surging with increasing power.
A minute later Renolf touched his hands to two of the three dials before him, twisting them slowly. At the same time he watched intently the readings of a dozen indicators above. A miraculous pulsing quantum of fourth-dimensional energy was probing the sky, finding the exact edge of the Moon. A secondary pencil of superswift radiation—like a mechanical draftsman—was marking the precise center of the orb above. Renolf depended on these errorless robots to guide him in setting his. reflector system squarely on Tycho.
The chronometer gave out a soft bell note. Sixty seconds to go! There
after, the two humans reacted to each swinging needle and shifting reading as though they were the pulse beats of their own hearts.
For a panic-stricken moment Dora felt a sense of inadequacy—felt a sinking inability to keep the giant power at her finger tips from running away with her—blasting out of control and leaving a vast pit on the desert floor. Then she drew on the reserves of her superhuman contact, and steadily applied the enormous currents to the great atom-splitting tubes. She had no time to look at her coworker.
If she had, she might have been appalled. His face a livid battlefield of concentration and power, he was setting his reflectors with delicate precision. Beneath his intense purposefulness was a strange look of apprehension.
Ten seconds! Nine—eight—Dora turned a dial with bated breath. Seven—six—Renolf twisted a vernier carefully. Five—four—three—they looked at one another soundlessly for a split second; all was ready—two—one——
The world felt a shock. All over the Earth, people stared at one another in sudden fear. An Earthquake—thought many. Those who had experienced the temblors of Earthquakes before knew it was something more. Earthquakes were a trembling of the ground underneath; this was a sudden, tingling blow, as though the whole Earth had leaped ahead! In inhabited parts of Africa and southern Europe, many persons were thrown off their feet.
INSIDE the remote control room on the Nile, Renolf and Dora paid no attention to the shock attendant to the automatic firing of the charge. Their whole mind was bound up in their instruments.
Something less than four seconds after the first thousand-ton charge had blasted its fury heavenward in an invisible beam, a tiny bell clinked sharply. Renolf, who had been twisting his dials during those seconds for a new setting of the key reflector, immediately set his vernier ten points further. The first charge had failed to crush the being’s screen! Renolf’s soundless curse was drowned out in a blast of sound that seemed to come from everywhere.
