by Don Wilcox
His followers pressed after him, onto the darkened incline. Men forced their way into the other ramps, advanced slowly, taking their cues from him. The four wide ribbons of close-packed humanity moved inward.
The Floating Dome was dark. Only one dim light showed from an outside corner of the shadowy plaza to reveal the indistinct clusters of faces at the windows. It was the light attached to the battery of loud speakers, operating on a separate circuit.
President Birch deserted the speakers, closed himself and the others within the building, virtually paralyzed with fear. He knew that unaccountably violent things can happen under mob pressures. Through the window he saw the advancing tides of waving weapons.
“If they break in it’s everyone for himself,” he gulped. He floundered through a black room; his hand came upon a portable phonograph. A sudden inspiration—perhaps music would temper the mob’s anger!
Ben Gleed, halfway up the ramp, saw the faces at the window, went cold with terror. His father! Lucille! Trapped in the Dome! His arms elbowed back, his feet dug against the sloped walk. But thousands of men and women, intoxicated with the power of mob rule, pressed him forward.
What would happen when these angry creatures reached the Dome? No man on earth could quell them now. Those three chance deaths . . . Violence would pay! Unreasoned violence! Had he brought this on? How could he know these thousands would suddenly cut loose and follow him? But it was true he’d led them on. Now they were out of hand, bent on smashing the Dome—and there was Lucille, horror stricken—
Music boomed forth from the loud speakers. A lively band number. The strong rhythm surged over four ramps. Four closely packed processions came on in sullen determination. The structure resounded with tramping feet.
The feet began to march. Four ramps felt the rhythmic thud of thousands of feet.
Two hundred feet below, the crowds in the park fled out from under falling bits of masonry, wedges, bolts—
“BREAK STEP!!!” Ben Gleed screamed at the top of his voice. “BREAK STEP OR YOU’LL—” His voice couldn’t carry against the deafening music.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! A rhythmic bombardment of feet.
Cr-r-r-ack! A cleavage ripped across the plaza. Stones hailed down. The marchers, oblivious, came on.
Ben raced ahead, leaped over a fissure, dashed across the plaza toward the loud speakers. The floor gaped open beneath his step, clamped his foot in a concrete vice, imprisoned him on the spot.
A section of railing broke away from one ramp. The approaching phalanx suddenly stopped, swerved dizzily to the opposite railing, felt the floor wobble and whip beneath their feet. The other three ramps grew heavier with marchers with every down beat of the band music. Fatal rhythm. The whole bridge-like structure groaned, rocked.
Ben, tearing at his shoestrings, found his foot freed. He sprang to the loud speakers, smashed the phonograph with a blow, cried into the microphones, “BREAK STEP! BREAK STEP, YOU FOOLS!”
But the rhythm had done its worst with the deadly effect of an earthquake. Two ramps broke free from the center, creaked downward like two gigantic rusty pump handles. The wrench of metal drowned the wails of terrorized people. Then the two remaining arches left bearing the weight of the Floating Dome on the vertex of their right angle sank gently with a strident whine, hung like a great open jaw. Concrete spilled to the ground. The man-made earthquake was over.
None of the arches had dropped far enough to spill its human cargo. The thousands of workers so quickly transformed from marching mobsters into wild-eyed statues, gradually relaxed their grips upon the railings and each other, again became breathing, functioning human animals. They looked across the open spaces to see their fellows stranded on sunken bridges.
At once the attention centered upon a conspicuously freakish spectacle wrought by the catastrophe: One of the descending ramps had left an arm of steel thrust upward, with one corner of the plaza, bearing the loud speakers and Ben Gleed, balanced upon it.
Before the stranded multitudes had time to stir in their uncertain tracks, Ben Gleed had the situation in hand. His voice zoomed through the speakers.
“Don’t move! Hold your positions. Everything will be okay . . . The fire ladders can reach you . . . There’ll be plenty of time for everyone . . .”
His commands hypnotized the helpless throngs. The vast crowds on the ground were also quick to act on his suggestions. From his vantage point, with the aid of his speakers, he brought quick order out of chaos.
He moved the crowds, directed the fire trucks, called in a stream of private cars to serve as ambulances for the injured, assigned a corner of the park for first aid, gave directions for handling the hysterical.
With the more serious victims cared for, attention turned to the task of removing the thousands from their aerial prisons. The rescue was not a job of minutes, but hours. Any impatient activity on the tenuously suspended ramps might result in further disaster. Was it possible, President Birch and his directors wondered, that Ben Gleed could hold the nervous hosts in check?
Ben saw the peril, clutched the microphone, plunged into a speech—such a speech as he’d never made before.
While the electric ladders busily shifted people down to earth, like grains of sand through an hour glass, Ben Gleed recited the whole history of the Efficio speed-up policies. He ventilated his own errors. At last, he said, his mistaken theories of speed were revealed to him as plainly as this very wreckage before his eyes.
“In fact, it’s the very same story. I believed that men never worked themselves to the limit. But what is the limit? It’s the breaking point!
“I assumed that we worked our machines to the limit, but we don’t. When we run them to what we call capacity, we still leave a safe margin. I forgot to do that with humans.
“When machines or humans go to their limits they’re on the verge of a crack-up. Another revolution per second, or one vibration too many, as we have seen tonight . . .”
Ben came to the painful subject of the revolt. It looked as though the fates had interfered; but the fates had spared them, to give them another chance, and it would be their responsibility to demand reforms, for the good of the city as well as themselves.
He lowered his tone as he saw that the last of the waiting groups came down the ladders. One of the trucks hoisted a ladder in his direction.
“In conclusion,” he said, “I’d like to help you make these changes in Super City, but I’m due to be deported—”
“NO! NO!” the crowd cried.
The ladder reached him. Someone was on it, coasting upward. President Birch. He carried a three-foot key of shining chromium. He spoke into the microphone.
“The directors and I have decided, after due deliberation, that the one person qualified to straighten this city out—” his words were drowned in cheers as he handed the Great Key to Ben, who promptly lost his footing, clutched the ladder for dear life. He and President Birch coasted down.
Later that night he held Lucille securely in his arms, told her his great plans for Super City, while his father cracked, “Some of those reporters outside the door are still askin’ if you’re a man devoid of sentiment. Kin I let ’em come in an’ see you now?”
LET WAR GODS CLASH!
First published in Fantastic Adventures, February 1940
There was war between Terrany and Belligia, and neutral Midland lay between them. Death rained down and Midland it plotted desperately to bring two dictators lace to face to fight out their own battles.
CHAPTER I
To Sondra the stillness that reigned through the underground rooms was frightening. Past midnight, still she sat at her information desk, waiting, wondering how long the President would keep her at her post. Her face framed in waves of dark red hair was pale, completely revealing her feelings. Something dangerous was in the air.
The President had sent most of his staff home long ago. The few who remained to wait upon him were silent in anxiety. Not from a fear of air raids,
for though Midland was a neutral nation, its government offices were bomb proof. Yet there was some intangible feeling of danger.
President Marbl expected a midnight visitor from one of the two warring nations.
Who? None of the staff knew. Someone of great importance, for Sondra and the others had been pledged to utmost secrecy.
Suddenly the silent waiting ended. Starchy Midland guards thudded through the concrete halls, passed Sondra’s desk like a marching machine, escorted a husky figure in a dazzling green and silver uniform toward President Marbl’s sanctum.
Brubbazein—dictator of Belligia! The powerful, hated, war maker—one of Europe’s gods of evil. Sondra chilled to the toes.
Was Midland about to sell out to one of the warring nations Whose shells whistled overhead? Sondra trembled at the thought. She knew peace-loving Midlanders could never willfully take sides in the bloody death struggle between dictators. But she also knew that President Marbl was desperate: Midland was caught in a vise that threatened to crush her.
No one breathed of the secret visit. The world did not know that Dictator Brubbazein had so much as stepped outside his boundaries. Only Sondra and a few others knew, and they were left completely in the dark over the matter, except for a rumor that spread among them like a fierce wind—not to be denied, Brubbazein would soon return!
And the big shells whined, on . . .
A curious war. Since the long and wide valley which was Midland separated the two warring pow-. ers, air battles and artillery had been the primary tactics, no infantry would attempt to march over Midland; the mine defenses were impassable. For the present each dictator resorted to such blockades as he could manage, and, continued abrasive activities with; long range guns.[1]
In this game the innocent nation of Midland was the loser.
On her northern borders the Belligian artillery pressed hard, hurled shells over her to kill the foe to her south (if they did not fall short and kill Midlanders instead.)
Terrany, in turn, directed her shells and planes northward to crush the warriors and civilians of Belligia (if they did not expend themselves upon a Midland factory or cathedral en route.)
But now, after three months, pressure against both Midland borders grew stronger, and the peace loving people were terrified, desperate. Their hopes went out like matches. On either side of them the number one passion was to fight until the last drop of blood was spent.
For the green and silver Belligians cried to the world that they must have every inch of territory which, their, barbaric ancestors overran a few centuries before. And no less determined were the propagandists of Terrany, who burned to save the world by repopulating it with superior blood. They must kill off their brothers to the north for civilization’s sake.
As both dictators massed infantry, all the prophets of the world predicted that Midland’s hours were numbered. No one could foresee that this small, helpless nation would throw a surprise monkey wrench into the cogs of destruction. Europa moved to the brink of one of the oddest quirks in history. Later, when the dictators’ war machines would be only empty ghosts, geologists would have to dig to the very roots of underground mountains to explain the curious turn of events. A secret within the earth.
Only President Marbl and a few mining engineers knew the geological secret that lay buried beneath their nation, far below the great mine shafts for which Midland was famous.
The second week after Dictator Brubbazein’s secret visit, the guards made another midnight march through Midland’s bomb sheltered halls of government.
Sondra sat at the information desk as before. The return of Brubbazein, she supposed. Tonight no doubt Midland would fall into his hands.
She felt sick and helpless, just as she had felt when the news reached her that her brother, attending school in Terrany, had been pressed into the service when he tried to return, to Midland, and had lost his life during the third week of the war.
The guards thundered past and she caught sight of the uniformed dignitary they escorted. It was not Brubbazein.
It was a wiry, black haired, narrow mustached military figure—Jaazel! Jaazel, the dictator of Terrany, the prodigy of a totalitarian state who had risen to power through his efficient purges and executions.
Sondra gripped the edge of her desk as the brilliant figure swept by like an electric wave of hatred. For an instant Jaazel’s eyes flashed into her own. Distended red-brown eyes that seemed to penetrate the secret channels of her mind, to detect the hot resentment that lurked there. Her brother . . . her friends. . .
Indirectly Jaazel had murdered her brother. He had actually murdered, with his own hands, the father of one of her friends. And now, she thought, perhaps he, (rather than Brubbazein) was to become Midland’s ally and savior. She quailed, knowing she could never have an ounce of respect for such a beast. She might pretend, but nothing more.
What had happened, she wondered, to her several friends back in Terrany? In her year of schooling across the line she had seen the terrible fascist blight descend upon them as Jaazel’s grip tightened.
Arden? What had happened to him? Had there been any truth to the story that he had fled from his native Terrany after his father was taken by one of the deadly purges? Would she ever see him again?
Her thoughts slipped off into chaotic reverie. She could have been fond of Arden. But after that tragedy struck him she hardly knew him, he became so strange and far-off. Then her term of school ended, she came back to her own country—
A buzzer sounded.
“Sondra.” President Marbl’s voice.
“Yes, your honor.”
“Turn your desk over to number seven for the next twenty-four hours. I wish you to accompany me on an excursion. My personal secretary is ill and I must have someone to keep notes—”
“Yes, your hon—”
“Someone trustworthy—with strong nerves. Our guest desires to make a tour of inspection—underground . . .”
An hour later, still dressed in her plain white and tan office dress, the lithe young girl huddled into a steel elevator car with a small group of uniformed men, dropped down-down through the endless black shaft of one of the famous Silgrilik Mines.
Within the next few hours she learned from their brief talk the guest would examine the deepest excavation ever made by man, pass his judgments upon the destructive resources of steam and molten lava that lay compressed beneath the final floor.
CHAPTER II
An Underground Meeting
The elevator car stopped at a dimly lighted station hewn in the wall. The smell of green stone pervaded the cool moist air. From this point downward the atmosphere would grow warmer and far heavier. Each member of the party was given a refrigerated suit and an oxygen helmet.
Sondra felt weighted down in her clumsy attire. As the men emerged from their dressing rooms she was bewildered to know who was who, for the helmets and suits provided complete disguise.
President Marbl’s voice reassured her, sounding with metallic overtones through the electric speaker in his oxygen helmet. He was encased in a soiled yellowish suit, number 11. She noticed that her own number was 22. She looked from one to another of the disguised creatures, finally determined that number 39, a quick nervous figure, was Jaazel. He was completely hidden. Not even his penetrating red-brown eyes could be seen.
Several thousand feet farther down they emerged bulkily from the elevator, passed through airtight doors, entered a spacious, well-furnished, well-lighted lobby that might have been a railway station. Lower Terminal, they called it.
A porter promptly announced that the place was atmosphere-conditioned and that they might remove their oxygen helmets and suits if they wished.
Here some of the employees wore only civilian clothes. Numerous visitors strolled about free of surplus impedimenta, others remained encased, perhaps to be ready to board an elevator or one of the outward bound cars through the numerous later passages, or perhaps to keep their identities secret. Most of
these were business men bent on leasing these subterranean channel? to rent them as jiving space for families fleeing the war zones.
Number 11 led the way; 22 and 39 followed to a private room. Marbl and Jaazel talked. Sondra drew her arms Out of her heavy sleeves, Held her notebook within the barrel-like trunk of her costume, scribbled shorthand furiously.
There was scarcely time, to realize all the implications of the Conversation, but the President’s plan dawned, on the girl gradually. This guest, she realized with a queer thrill was the Dictator of Terrany.
“You say that I will see the shaft that is ready to carry destruction to the capital of Belligia?” he, said in a harsh, demanding voice,
“Exactly. You realize, I am sure—” the President’s manner was tense, “What if the dictator of Belligia were suddenly killed, your enemy would dissolve!”
“Certainly I realize—” Through his own heated words the dictator glimpsed another cold truth. If he, the dictator of Terrany were killed, his own war monster would go to pieces. “But how am; I to know that this shaft—”
Marbl produced a three dimensional drawing which the other took in his encased hands. Sondra could not see the suspicions that cluttered the dictator’s face, but she knew they were there.
“If you wish to see this shaft,” Marbl continued, “and a demonstration of the lava pressures which our engineer could release into it, you must descend to another station twenty-five miles deeper.”
The helmet of number 39 was motionless. A silent glare.
“Or, if you prefer,” said Marbl, reading the dictator’s doubts, “you may send your best geologist, upon whose judgment—”
“My own judgment is quite reliable,” Jaazel snapped. “How do I get there without anyone knowing who I am or what my purpose is?”
“The one engineer who drives the subterranean drill will take you.”
