The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  All forenoon I worked, as carefully as I could, and as swiftly as I dared.

  I had to bring a second hoist into action to secure a more accurate control of the lowering weight. On several trials the line-up missed by a fraction of an inch. I grew suspicious of the plumb rule, for no good reason, and also the measuring stick; so I deserted the fitting job to rummage through the supply shelves for other measures.

  In doing so, I killed two birds with one stone. All these loose tools and scraps of junk had to be gathered up or fastened down before the test, because it was the business of this magnet to attract steel from far and wide. And the magnet wasn’t made to discriminate between falling bombs and loose alligator wrenches.

  Of course the supposition was, as John Ingerlusk had explained to me, that such things as falling bombs, being already in motion, would be much more responsive to the magnetic field than stationary iron or steel, such as steam radiators or hot water boilers. It doesn’t take much to swerve a flying bullet from its course. But objects that are rooted down, like steel girders, or objects riding on tracks, like locomotives, don’t go jumping off into space without a heck of a lot of physical persuasion.

  “Bring me that canvas sack, Doormat,” I said. “No, not that ball of waste. That canvas sack . . . Go on . . . farther . . . There. Bring me that.”

  A dog could have obeyed me easily enough, but I had to coax to get any service out of Doormat, for all his training. Since I was standing up on a tool bench, filling my arms with scraps of sheet metal, pipe couplings, chains, and some pieces of baling wire, I kept cajoling the feline until he did what I wanted. He caught a corner of the sack between his teeth and hobbled over, pretty much on three feet. He even tried to jump upon the tool bench but lost his hold.

  “Good kitty, Doormat. For that I’ll let you catch an extra mouse.”

  I threw scrap metal into sacks right and left and piled the stuff at the base of an upright steel beam. Then I threaded some baling wire through the canvas sacks and bound them all to the beam with a few twists of the wire.

  Back to the core job once more! Having worked off a little nervous energy, my hands were surer. I steadied the core with one hand and operated the hoist chain slowly with the other. Little by little, the core lowered. It slipped snugly into place.

  “Bring me the wrench, Doormat.”

  I pointed to the heavy tool lying on the concrete. The cat walked over to it, pawed at it, looked at me contemptuously, and walked away with his proud nose in the air.

  I went over the instrument with the wrench and put the final pressure to every nut. The new core was now locked in its permanent prison ready for the test. The heavily insulated lead-in wires were all set to transmit the electrical impulse, ready for the final snap of the switch.

  The switch had been placed, in accordance with Old John’s insistence, about thirty-five yards away; which is to say, near the front of the entrance passage. This had been done so that the magnet could be turned on from a safe distance. We had found, during our tests with the small model, that this safeguard was a worthy one. For although we had meant to get all scraps of loose metal fastened down, the snap of the switch had proved there were a few oversights, particularly in dusty corners and piles of scrap lumber, where rusty nails and bits of tie-wire like to hold secret conventions.

  The thought of those wisps of flying steel brought back a mental picture of Old John as I had last seen him. A different sort of flying steel had got him. I wondered if he had ever felt it, or if he had just gone out like a light. There hadn’t been a hint of agony in his face, lying there . . .

  And to think, if it hadn’t been for the war, he’d have been taking his bids from private power companies, or maybe the government, and this plant would have been selling juice as limitless as the tides.

  But a war changes everything. The first bombs that fell on the capitol had set his mind to work, and he’d made me promise to keep the whole business a secret until we proved it.

  I kept it. I didn’t tell a soul, not even the girlfriend. At this very moment, as I neared the crucial step that would prove or disprove the magnet’s power, I was aware that Alice had no idea where I was or what I was doing.

  Something in the glitter of the noon sun on the silver waves had thrust Alice into my memory sharply. Or perhaps it was the low tide, reminiscent of that certain day when we waded out to Castle Rock and lingered to let the high tide come in and strand us there. Would there ever be another day like that? That was life at its best . . .

  And to think I had let Alice take a job in the munitions factory. In a basement, at that. Hell, if a bomb would ever strike . . .

  “Don’t tell anyone, not even your girl-friend.” That was what old John had said to me. “When the time comes, I’ll report to the government. That’s all that’s necessary. Overnight they’ll build Ingerlusk magnets by the hundreds and dot them over the country to draw the bombs.”

  That was Old John’s dream. He had drawn up all the blue prints for planting the magnets underground. He knew they would have to have plenty of insulation to take the pounding. But that part would be easy enough. In an age when bombers fly too high to be seen or heard, the need, he said, was for a completely new instrument to cancel out the danger.

  I started to put the blue prints in the handcar, and that, together with the fact that Doormat leaped out from under my feet and gave me a saucy snarl, shows how excited I was becoming. My wish was getting ahead of my achievement. I tossed the blue prints back to the tool bench.

  The wish was to complete the test at once, to jump into the handcar, pump back to the little mining suburb as fast as possible. Then hop a bus into the city and deliver the facts and the blue prints into the hands of the proper governmental authorities. I was so eager that I was cutting corners.

  But, stopping for a moment to get myself organized, I saw that there were three things that needed to be done—well, four, counting my obligations to Doormat—before I would have any good news to spill to the proper authorities.

  The first was to finish the job of pick-up and tie-down; that is, to make sure the magnetic, attraction wouldn’t find any loose metal to draw except the metal I wanted it to draw for purposes of test.

  I made a complete round of the premises, even surveying the intake channels and the water storage and pressure plants. At last I was satisfied that all loose steel and iron was accounted for and that no damage could possibly occur.

  Secondly, I rolled the steel handcar off the rails onto the level concrete and set It at precisely fifty feet from the magnet. This handcar would be my test object.

  Would the magnet be able to draw it into motion at that distance?

  If not, I would shorten that distance and make additional tests.

  My third item of final preparation was to build a loose barrier of timbers to catch the handcar in a wedge, in case it should coast toward the magnet with dangerous speed. I was not afraid of the magnet’s being damaged, for John Ingerlusk had constructed a low concrete wall around it to protect it. But I was afraid the handcar might suffer injury. And the handcar, of course, was my only possible transportation back. This coast was too rugged ever to be bothered by fishermen, and there was nothing like a telephone in this lost bit of world.

  “Doormat, get out from under my arm. Let go that tape line. I don’t need any help taking measurements. There’s fifty feet, and the car’s got a wooden trap waiting to catch it. At last we’re ready—almost.”

  Doormat seemed to sense that a momentous occasion was impending. He kept rubbing against my ankle and looking up questioningly—or perhaps he was trying to steal a little warmth.

  “You’ll get warm as soon as I throw a switch. What I mean, it’ll warm up a plenty. You better keep back.”

  There was bound to be a great deal of heat in an electro-magnet of this size. Except for the latest adaptation of the Kapitza cooling system, such a coil would burn up. As Old John had said, we could thank that Russian for finding out
how to use liquid helium on a job like this.[*]

  “Keep back, Doormat,” I warned again. “There’ll be sparks—big ones—between those points. If you’d stray between them, or step across those lead-in connections, there wouldn’t be the makings of a violin string left. Back! Come back with me out of danger.”

  I couldn’t conceive of there being any danger as long as I was at the extension switch, several feet farther from the electromagnet than the steel handcar. It was danger to Doormat that I was considering. I wondered whether fuses as well as cat might not be burned out, in case the haughty feline chose to disobey orders.

  As matters turned out, I shouldn’t have wasted my worries on the cat.

  Everything was ready.

  I touched the switch and jerked it off again in the same split second.

  On the instant there was a rip of steel car-wheels on concrete as the handcar scooted about twelve feet toward the magnet.

  It stopped dead, instead of coasting on. I knew from the fact that neither wheels nor handlebars had turned, that I had left the brakes set. Brakes or no brakes, the steel car had jumped into motion at the touch of the switch. That magnet had power!

  All my attention had been glued on the handcar, of course, but simultaneously I had caught several other impressions.

  I was aware that a bit of steel had clanged somewhere back of me. Now as I turned I saw that the eight-inch key to the latticed steel gates had slipped off its peg in the stone wall and sailed to the floor.

  I say “sailed” because it had landed eighteen or twenty feet this side of the Peg.

  I glanced curiously at the latticed steel gates and tried to remember whether I had left them in that position—half-way closed. I felt sure that they had been wide open. If so, that moment of magnetism had reached all the way out and swung each of them through a short arc.

  After all these matters had been considered as calmly as my state of excitement would permit, there was still another lingering sensation. I seemed to have heard a curious plop from somewhere near the seashore.

  I gazed out in that direction. The nearest patch of sea was at a gentle beach straight out from the power house entrance. There the waters were placid. What little regular slush of waves I could hear came from much farther out, where the sea battered tongues of jagged rock. However, I was convinced that the plop had come from the water nearer at hand.

  I tried to tell myself that it was no more than a big fish jumping for a fly. But I wasn’t too sure. The echo gave me a strange shudder.

  I made ready for a second test, resolving that this one would make up for the failures of the first.

  I released the brakes on the handcar so that it would roll into action freely. I placed it a full one hundred feet away from the magnet, still not quite as far away as my extension switch.

  Then, taking in the huge latticed gates and the strip of sea at a glance, I decided upon one further safeguard. I pulled the two big gates closed across the entrance to the plant, locked them, and hung the steel key on a bit of wire, which I looped around one of the latticed bars and fastened securely.

  Now there was a vertical checkerboard of steel between me and the outside world.

  I reached for the switch. Doormat was looking up at me as if waiting for me to press it Just then a drop of dust fell on my hand. I glanced up.

  There was nothing in motion above my head to account for falling dust. It could have dropped, of course, as a result of the slight circulation of air caused by my walking. But why did it happen this time and not some other time?

  At once my suspicions were on a feather edge. My eyes rested on the twelve big steel rails that were stored directly overhead. Was it possible that that instant of magnetism had caused them to move?

  It seemed almost incredible, but I was curious enough to investigate. I got a flashlight, climbed up on the handcar, craned my neck toward the nearest steel crossbeam. The roof of this entrance passage formed a shallow inverted V, which left six feet of space between the crossbeams and the apex. The twelve rails we had stored there were lined up in a direction parallel to the length of the entrance passage, pointing straight—or very nearly straight—toward the giant magnet. Therefore the attraction, if it made itself felt upon them at all, would tend to pull them longitudinally.

  But, as I had previously noted, the rails were lying across two crossbeams, and their innermost ends were touching—or very nearly touching, as the case might be—the surface of a third and somewhat higher crossbeam. The beam would stop any rail that tended to slide longitudinally.

  My only conclusion was that the outer end of a rail must have moved a fraction of an inch, being hurled a trifle straighter by the sudden magnetic—

  “Doormat, get away from that switch! Get away—”

  I was standing on the end of the handcar, which I had rolled to a point beneath the crossbeam nearest the latticed gates. In fact, I was half climbing, half hanging. That is, my feet were bearing upon the low end of the handlebars, and my left arm was hooked up over three of the stored rails. I had drawn my head up high enough to bring my eyes on a level with the dusty surface of the crossbeam, where my flashlight revealed that one of the three rails over my right shoulder had altered its position about a centimeter.

  That’s where I was when a glance floorward told me that Doormat was playing with the switch.

  And that’s when I yelled and dropped my flashlight.

  And that’s precisely when the whole works went into action full blast—for just as the obedient feline jumped back, the falling flashlight struck the switch.

  The handcar shot out from under my feet like an earthquake. Instinctively I tightened my grip on the rails on either side of my head—a natural thing to do when one finds himself suddenly depending upon his hands for support. But in this case it was just the wrong thing to do.

  Even as my hands tightened, so did the rails. There was an almost noiseless slip, a little shower of dust against the light, and a sudden pressure of steel against both sides of my head. On the instant my skull was locked, as if between two locomotives.

  I heard the handcar coast into the trap with a crash of wood. It must have struck a terrific blow. I couldn’t see, because I was temporarily head-locked and my head was turned toward the latticed gate and the sea.

  Did I say temporarily?

  I squirmed to free myself but couldn’t. An unspeakable terror shot through me. If the rails should slip still closer together—

  I pulled and tugged with all my strength, but I could not move my head in the slightest. The pain of that pressure was terrific. Part of my right ear was caught within the vise, and X would gladly have torn it from my head if that would have freed me. But I knew well enough that my head, damn it, was widest not at the ears but at a point an inch or more above them. I was caught.

  If I relaxed the grip of my hands over the rails, the pains shooting through my head only became the more unbearable. Still, I realized that only luck had prevented my skull from being instantly crushed; for my head was no more than a soap-bubble to these massive rails. There were three of them on each side, packed together as tightly as floor boards. Obviously the magnetic pull had done its worst, as far as they were concerned.

  But the drawing range of the magnet was not limited to one hundred feet, nor one thousand. The proof of its power came now, in such a swift and overwhelming demonstration that at first I thought it was some torture-maddened vision.

  Through the little open squares in the steel lattice I saw the round object roll up out of the sea. It cut through the blue water like a strange spherical monster. It gained speed as it hissed across the gravel. The funnel-like shape of the coastline had headed it as straight as a bullet for the power plant gates.

  It was bouncing, almost flying, toward me, glinting like silver, then turning black as it came into the power plant’s afternoon shadow. I fully expected it to blast the latticed gates and me to hell and back. For it could be nothing other than a deadly float
ing mine.

  The thing struck the steel gates on a long low bounce. All the cavernous rooms back of me echoed that wild screaming clang. The gates wrenched at their hinges, the latticed bars bulged inward, but the explosive mine didn’t break through.

  And by some quirk of fate, it didn’t explode.

  It simply smashed the gate locks and stopped, hugging the vertical lattices that cut it off from its destination.

  Now all was silent, save for the hum of the machine. My heart began to beat again, shooting pile-driver throbs through my imprisoned head. How long could I endure this deadly vise? Was there any way to fight off the blackness that was already threatening to sweep across my eyes?

  I tightened the muscles of my arms all the way down through my shoulders; then, holding my neck and chest as rapidly as possible to relieve my skull of additional strain, I succeeded in swinging my legs upward and hooking my heels over the rails.

  This change of position relieved my arms to some extent and helped to ward off the faintness. My thoughts grew a little clearer. Straws of schemes for undoing this mess floated through my mind and I clutched at them.

  But instead of hitting upon any plausible ways out, I became more and more aware of the impossible trap I had fallen into.

  The big latticed door was locked and the lock was smashed. There was no way out for me, not to mention the handcar, unless I managed to do some cutting with a blow torch. Old John had had an acetylene torch once; but in my clean-up of loose metals I hadn’t run across it. Perhaps it could be found if I could get free. Perhaps there would be fuel—perhaps not.

  If someone would only pass within hearing—but no one would come this way—not once in a month of Sundays.

  The only real likelihood of a break through the latticed door wasn’t a pleasant one. That likelihood sprang from the fact that this magnetic field must be much more powerful than I had originally guessed. It might extend miles out into the sea to pull in other floating mines.

  Yes, the more I thought of it, the more probable it seemed that a number of deadly mines might already be on their way. The first one to arrive would surely blast the lattices to splinters. Trapped as I was, I would get that jaunt to hell and back—I and all my little atoms.