The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  Startled awake by a roar which, ascending from a thousand feet below, rattled the windows with the force given it by millions of throats, she found the room glowing with a green and spectral light. The usual murmur of the great city had changed to a terrific tumult in which she could sense a terrible agony of fear even at this alpine height. She ran to the window. Night had fallen, but it was not dark. From far below came the green light, a glowing luminescence, which reminded her of some rotting fungus which she had one night found in the woods near Cameron’s laboratory. The glowing material made a gridiron there beneath, filling the streets south and west, till it merged in sheets of green flame where she knew the harbor and rivers lay. Immediately beneath her the streets were still clear, but bathed in that unearthly light she could see black streams. In the cupboard she knew her brother had a pair of binoculars. Quickly getting them, she focused them on the black streams. She saw people, thousands, tens of thousands, rushing north, shouting in a frenzy of terror, and there, only a little south, the glowing green light pouring up the streets, towering far above the hurrying struggling mobs, moving with incredible swiftness, engulfing the stragglers. The menace had reached New York!

  She swept the glasses north whence came a rolling as of thunder. Far up the Sound she could see flashes—the forts at the upper end of the city were fighting their big guns. South again, and below, quiet now, the glowing jelly had filled the streets. New York was dead.

  “Well, I’m in a fine fix now! I’m safe enough here, but how am I going to get away. Probably starve to death. Well that’s better than being swallowed up by that thing down there.”

  A terrific crash downtown came to her startled ears; then almost before she could turn, another, and another. Down on the tip of the Island, where first Manhattan had reached toward the sky, there was a clear space where the 85-story Bank of Manhattan building had been. Woolworth’s too was gone, and all the mountainous structures below. As she gazed, she saw the 150-story City Hall Tower, just completed, sway, then, like some giant of the forest felled after centuries of growth by the woodman’s axe, topple over, and gathering speed, crash into the lambent sea which bathed its foot. As it struck the surface of the quivering flood of light there was a tremendous splash, and through the air for hundreds of feet flew huge glowing fragments. They fell on the roofs and the serried façades of the buildings for blocks around, and then, to Mary’s horror, they spread, and wherever the patches of light lay the sturdy structures of steel and granite began to melt.

  “Good God! I’m not so safe after all. The ghastly stuff eats even the material of which these buildings are made. I wonder how long this place will last. I guess it’s finish for me.”

  * * * *

  All this time the yellow sport plane had been rushing across the continent, sliding down the radio beacon from New York. Intent on the path ahead, the two leather clad figures bent over the dashboard. No talk, for the muffler had been cut for greater speed. No talk, but the thoughts of the two were identical. “What’s happening in New York? What’s happening to Mary? Is she safe?” Over and over these thoughts reiterated themselves in the weary brains. These two great scientists, in whose intellects lay perhaps the saving of the world, had forgotten everything save that wisp of a girl in New York, sister of one and sweetheart of the other.

  At last the Appalachians appeared, passed beneath them, fell away behind them. Night had come. Donald who had yielded his place at the stick to Cameron, suddenly clutched his companion’s arm and pointed ahead. On the horizon there pulsated a greenish glow. Standish’s mind flew back to that star in Andromeda, whose passing he had watched months before. Here again he saw the light whose components he had analyzed in his gas spectroscope! The plane was headed directly for New York, and straight ahead of them the luminescence was at its brightest!

  Ten minutes now, and they were circling over the great city. From the bay to Westchester, from the Palisades east to the sea, the city was invested. As far north as the ridge of giant erections about 42nd Street the smooth expanse of the phosphorescent sea told of the progress of destruction.

  Cameron reached for the lever which silenced the roaring exhaust of the twin engines.

  “If only we’re in time; if only she is still in my lab. I’m going to go past the windows and see.”

  Throttled down to its slowest flying speed, the little plane dipped gracefully past the doomed tower rising high above the glowing rectangle of the park. Not twenty feet from the tower it glided. And there, in the window which both men sought so eagerly, was the figure they had hardly hoped would be there!

  Up again then for consultation.

  “Doug, how close can we get to that window?”

  “I’ll get within a foot, or we’ll all go to hell together.”

  “Then do it, and I’ll get her out, but first tell her what we plan. Get a flashlight; she knows the Morse Code. Remember how I used to signal her in the old days?”

  “A long slow glide now, about 500 feet away, lucky that your window faces the park.”

  Cameron obeyed, while the astronomer flashed his dots and dashes.

  “On the sill, ready to jump.”

  A wave of the brave little hand signaling understanding. Then up again.

  Up to 5,000 feet and a mile away. Then while Standish creeps out to the end of the wing, the motor is shut off and a long glide begun. Down, on a long slant, straight for that pinnacle rising sheer ahead. Down, ever down, with increasing speed hurtles the plane. A miracle of accurate steering, another miracle of perfect timing, and sheer muscular strength are required. Stark courage from all three, or the gallant attempt at rescue must end in disaster. Will they, can they do it? Too near—and a crash; too far and a new attempt cannot be made. For see, already the great tower sways with approaching dissolution.

  Perfect aiming, the plane almost grazes the side of the tower. Perfect execution—a hundred feet from the window on whose sill Mary stands, one hand clinging to the sash, the other outstretched; the ship dips, then suddenly rising, almost stalls directly opposite the opening. Perfect timing—the hand of the man on the wing grips the hand of the girl on the sill; a leap, a tug, and there are now two on the wing. Frantically Cameron works at the controls; frantically the lovers cling to the taut surface of the fabric on which they sprawl. Overbalanced, the craft reels drunkenly. Then the roar of the motor, the wings grip the air, and all is safe.

  As Cameron zoomed upward, the hundred-story University rocks in ever-widening arcs; then slowly, slowly it begins to fall. Intact, entire, as it had for so short a time soared over the City, so it falls. Slowly at first, then with gradually increasing speed the great structure falls, until with a rush almost too fast for the eye to follow, it crashes into the lucent tide.

  Into the little cockpit tumble the lovers, trembling, exhausted with their supreme effort. Cameron too, is trembling, but he must guide the ship with its precious freight. Westward now they turn, westward through the horrible night.

  And now for the first time, they can look about them and take stock. The air is thick with darting planes, fleeing westward from the scourge. Below them not a house that is not ablaze with light, not a highway that is not jammed with rushing conveyances, not a railroad which is not crammed with hurrying trains, westward every one. Looking behind, from north to south, in the wide sweep which their height of 7000 feet allowed them, nothing but that terrible spectral green light, nothing but that immense sea, not of water, but of all-devouring jelly, come across that vast infinity of interstellar space to harry the earth and conquer it. And overhead the black velvet sky, and the stars, gleaming still in the wide arch of the heavens as they did when Earth was a whirling mass, as they still shall when this ball is naught but a cold, dead thing.

  “Switch on the communication receiver C; let’s hear what the news broadcast says.”

  “U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1248.

  “The entire eastern coasts of North and South America are now completely covered
with the jelly. Extent of the investment from ten miles to twenty-five. Spain and southern France are being slowly covered; the rest of the western coast of Europe penetrated only from a mile to five.”

  “U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1249.

  “The scientific conference is still in session. No solution has as yet been arrived at, but the chairman wishes to announce that the people of the earth need not despair; progress is being made. Donald Standish, the noted astronomer, is still unaccountably missing. It is requested that any one having information as to his present location communicate at once with 2 AG, the government intelligence station.”

  Mary turned to Donald, in whose arms she was still being tightly held. “Oh, Don, why did you leave your post for me. The world needs you, why did you leave it for me?”

  “Dear, if you had gone, the rest of the world could have followed for all of me. But now, now that you’re safe, we must get back. I’ve got a hunch that Doug and I together can arrive at the right thing to do. We can’t land now. Once down in that mob we’d never be able to take off again. Besides, neither of us can think straight just yet; too much has happened in the last thirty hours. We’ll soon be home now, and we’ll get busy. Drive her, Doug.”

  Now the sun had overtaken them and a new day was begun. Close ahead rose the peaks of the Rockies, among them the mountain on which perched Cameron’s wilderness laboratory. A long spiral, and the little ship of the air dropped gently on the landing field at its door.

  The passengers debarked stiffly from the light plane, then Douglas taxied it into the hangar. Emerging promptly, the three of them entered the house.

  Physically exhausted as they were by the long journey, there was yet no thought of sleep. They were still shaking with the horror of those frightful scenes they had so recently witnessed.

  Mary was tottering with weariness, but held herself bravely. Not for worlds would she permit her lover to see how near the verge of hysteria she was, now that the danger was past. She looked around the long comfortable room—cheery fireplace and all—with a shudder. How peaceful and quiet everything was—and over there—nameless horrors out of hell—the indescribable stampede of maddened humanity—the hideous screech of some poor devil engulfed by the advancing monster—no, no!—that way lay madness—she must stop.

  Donald was watching her anxiously. “Mary, you must get some sleep at once.”

  “I’m all right—just a little attack of nerves,” she smiled wanly. “Don’t trouble yourself about me; I want to help, too.”

  “We’ll puzzle this out ourselves, and when you wake, if we’ve evolved any ideas, we’ll let you in on it. Now, be a good girl and go to bed. Haven’t you something soothing in your lab?” he turned to Douglas.

  “Certainly; just the thing for you, Mary. Douglas went to the cupboard and poured out a small tumbler full of a pale liquid. “Just drink this down, and you’ll slide so smoothly into the arms of Morpheus, the next thing you know the birds will be twittering in the trees. Here you are; take it.”

  Mary looked at them both for a moment—saw the worry in their eyes, and capitulated. “All right, boys, if you insist; though I’m sure I can be of help.” She drank the potion, and retired to her bedroom.

  The two men filled their pipes, and settled back in their chairs. Their bodies were poisoned with fatigue, but their brains were racing keenly. For a while they smoked in silence, gratefully inhaling the fragrant fumes.

  Standish was the first to break the silence.

  “As you know, Doug, I have a theory that accounts for this demoniac visitation, but when I sprang it on the conference, I was laughed at for my pains.”

  Douglas looked at him keenly. He knew his chum, and knew that he was not given to hazarding wild hypotheses unless they contained a solid substratum of truth.

  “Go over it again,” he said quietly. “I promise to listen with an open mind.”

  Donald launched again into his tale—the strange living star in the island universe—its explosive disintegration into space—the queer dust cloud of tiny globules reported by the fishing smack—followed by the appearance of this horrible amorphous life-mass that was threatening to engulf the earth.

  Cameron listened intently. Thoughtfully he drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair. He, too, was familiar with the hypotheses of Clerk-Maxwell and Arrhenius.

  “There is a good deal of plausibility about your theory,” he acknowledged thoughtfully, “and it accounts also for the vast proliferating powers of this monstrous mass—no life as we know it on this planet could even approximate the uncanny speed of its growth, nor have our primitive life-forms the ability to subsist on inorganic matter to quite the extent that it has,” again absently drumming on his chair.

  He relapsed into brooding thought. Standish looked at his friend, but forbore to say anything. When Cameron was on the verge of something brilliant, he always drummed. So the astronomer waited.

  The break was not long in coming. Douglas’ brow suddenly cleared—a look of triumph in his eye.

  “By George, I have it!” he almost shouted. “I believe your fantastic story, old man, and I’m going to rid the world of this menace. Listen to me for a moment.”

  “You have my closest attention.”

  “Suppose we assume the truth of your hypothesis. Then this living world, moving in the Andromeda universe, shining by its own luminosity, separated by unthinkable distances from any hot gaseous star, would naturally be accustomed only to the faint starlight of the heavens. No such blaze of light as even our ordinary sunlight ever came within its ken. Now you’ve heard of phototropism?”

  Standish nodded his head, but his friend went on heedlessly, absorbed in the plan maturing in his mind.

  “It’s the reaction of protoplasm to light,” he explained. “If you take any unicellular animal like the amoeba, and expose it to a strong light, it will shrink away from the source of the light, and try to get out of its path. If you use a powerful ray of concentrated ultraviolet light—the reaction will be much more apparent—the amoeba will literally run for its life—and if exposed long enough to the rays, will die.

  “Now if we can obtain such drastic results with life forms inured and habituated by constant exposure to the sun’s rays continually beating on our planet, what about this alien protoplasmic mass, unaccustomed to strong light of any kind, and no doubt feeling irritable even during our normal sunshine?”

  Standish sat up excitedly. He was beginning to catch the drift of Cameron’s reasoning.

  Douglas went on. “My plan is this. Have the nations of the world concentrate their technicians and engineers in the power plants and factories most remote from the menace. Construct huge searchlights of the utmost candle power; and machines for casting enormous beams of ultra-violet light. In the meantime have the people of the areas endangered by the billowing march of the monster retreat to the mountain fastnesses. That can be done fairly easily—its progress from all reports is approximately ten to fifteen miles a day. When all is in readiness, mount our machines on tractors, and drive them in front of the encroaching fiend. When it comes within striking distance, turn on the juice full blast. The power will come by tuned radio waves from the power plants operating in the hinterland. If our theories are correct, on the impact of our rays, the viscid mass will react much more violently than an amoeba or paramecium would. Retreat would be all it would think of, and the more exposed masses would be killed off. In that way, we could get rid of the menace, or at least drive it back into the ocean, by following it steadily all the way.”

  Standish got up in enthusiasm, and wrung Cameron’s hand. “Boy, you’re a wizard! That’s a marvelous scheme! You’ll be the savior of the world!”

  “Hold on a moment,” Douglas smiled protestingly, “it may work and it may not. Remember, I’m basing my scheme on your hypothesis.”

  “It’ll work all right,” returned Donald confidently, “and now I know I’m right, too.”

  “Don’t run away
so fast,” warned the bacteriologist. “Remember, at the best, we shall only have managed to drive it back into the ocean. Once there, we can do no more. There, in the vast depths of the sea, with what we know of the rapidity of its procreation, it will once more overwhelm the world.”

  Donald groaned. “There you go—get me all excited, and then you let me down. I forgot that part. So what’s the good of your swell scheme?”

  “Ah! but I have something else up my sleeve,” grinned his companion. “You know, of course, that I’ve been working my head off trying to find a cure for cancer. I haven’t succeeded as yet—though the outlook is promising. But in the course of my researches, I’ve invented a technique for excising cancer growths from the living organism, and growing them independently in special culture media. I have also discovered a method of activating them so that when replaced in living tissues they will multiply with unbelievable rapidity. At present, I have on hand here in the laboratory about fifty pounds of activated cancer cultures, and that is sufficient for my purpose.

  “Now to get back to your theory again. If this visitation is in truth from an alien world, it is highly improbable that it was ever exposed to the disease of cancer. If that is so, then it lacks whatever immunity our life has obtained through constant exposure, and the cancer cells will spread like wildfire through the whole vast organism—and this malign influence will be eradicated from the face of the earth.”

  “Man, I repeat—you’re a wizard!” The astronomer pumped his hand violently. Then an idea struck him. “But why not spray it with cancer immediately—why bother with ultra-violet light to drive it into the depths of the sea.”

  “Because,” explained Douglas patiently, “cancer is no respecter of persons, and once let loose on land, it is liable to spread to all forms of earth life, and we shall only have succeeded in destroying ourselves too. In the ocean, however, the range is sharply limited—we shall instruct the people of the earth to remain inland until the danger is passed. Once killed, the whole mass will descend to the floors of the seas and there the cold and pressure will destroy the cancerous tissues.”