Death Quotient and Other Stories

by John D. MacDonald

  Once again he was in outer space. The ships drove closer to earth. This time Earth seemed to be the size of a baseball.

  Suddenly it erupted into a glaring sheet of white flame which engulfed the spaceships, and he fell fainting to the floor.

  When he awakened, before his eyes, he intercepted the thought of anger. He looked up into the face of the creature. “You nearly destroyed the effect, creature. In the midst of it you made a loud sound with your mouth. It gave me pain. Do not do it again.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Final War

  Joseph Huddy, one of eight survivors of a daylight infiltration patrol, stood up behind the rock where he had sought shelter. He rubbed the back of a dirty hand across his wet forehead and glanced apprehensively toward the grey sky.

  He thought, “That joker that talked this morning wasn’t kidding!” He did not think it odd that, though he had failed to believe the broadcast at the time, he suddenly believed it now. If asked, he would have said, “Hell, all of a sudden I could see those zombies, the big grey boys. Scared me, damn if it didn’t!”

  Dazed, he looked up the small ravine. One of “them” was standing in plain sight. By force of habit, Joe snatched up his forgotten weapon, leveled it at the stocky foreigner. But suddenly he thought that it was pretty silly to get all hot about killing one of “them” when there was a far greater danger. His finger relaxed, slid off the trigger.

  With sudden resolution, he tossed the gun aside, yelled, “Hey there!”

  The stocky man looked down toward him, grinned nervously. A few moments later they had exchanged cigarettes, were squatting on their heels.

  “I be damn,” Joe said. “You all of a sudden saw that big grey thing too?”

  “I see,” the man said, his eyes round and wide. He shuddered.

  “What about this war we’re having?” Joe asked.

  The man thumped his chest. “Me, I quit. Go home. See wife before—boom!”

  “Not a bad idea. Hell, if any officers see us though, we’ll both be shot.”

  In response the man merely pointed with his thick thumb. Joe looked over his shoulder. Fifty feet away the lieutenant in charge of Joe’s patrol stood chatting with an enemy officer. They both seemed excited.

  “Something tells me the war’s over,” Joe said wonderingly.

  General Argo and Field Marshal Jatz looked at each other with impassive faces. Suddenly Argo grinned. “I’m going to get myself court-martialed for this little tea-party.”

  Jatz relaxed and scratched his head. He looked worried. “I also. Never should have come here to this country in the first place.”

  Argo said quietly, “We’ve been trying to convince you people of that, you know.”

  Jatz grinned. “You have been very convincing, my friend. But somehow … I do not know how to say it. We were enemies. Now we are both … men. Brothers. Like two relatives fighting and along comes a peacemaker and they both turn on him. Now we have a strange race. A stronger enemy.”

  “Would you like to take a look at the barrier?”

  For a moment Jatz hesitated. Then he shrugged. “I have nothing to fear from you, my friend. I would like very much to take a look at this barrier. I lost rockets against it and thought it was something you people had devised.”

  “We thought it was something you put there.”

  Side by side they walked down the long corridor toward the waiting elevator. Their staff officers followed along, seeing nothing particularly strange in this odd and amicable alliance.

  All over the world hate was forgotten—hate for other men. Fear of other men was forgotten. In its place was hatred of the invader from space, fear of the sudden death of the world.

  The three battle fronts of the world dissolved. The leaders of all nations flew by fastest means to the hidden field in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

  A lean and tired man presided at the long polished table. His name was Stanford Rider.

  “Possibly all of you share my own feeling of guilt. We, the statesmen and politicians of the world, made possible the conditions which resulted in this deadly and barren war which has laid waste our countries and impoverished our peoples.”

  He paused, saw reluctant agreement on every face. He continued. “Now we are met on a far different battlefield. Now our conflicts between nations are childish by comparison. We are in the position of small creatures of the forest beneath whom has been placed a mighty charge of explosives. It may be that we will be as powerless to alter the course of events as the wild creatures would be to halt the operation of the time fuse on the hidden mines.

  “These may be the last few days of our lives. At least for these last few days there will be peace among men of all nations. Our psychiatrists have told me that the visions we all saw were activated by a projection of thought more powerful than we can contemplate. It is futile to question the accuracy of the visions we all saw. We saw our planet being destroyed in order to wipe out the ships of some unknown race which is at war with the strangers from space who have invaded our planet.

  “In this perilous extremity, I invite your suggestions.”

  Every known force was applied to the barrier. The most powerful atomic explosion ever released on Earth was detonated close to the barrier. Squadrons of high-explosive rockets exploded in sequence, in unison, in bursts of ten, fifty and five hundred, expended their fury against the barrier.

  And in the end they accomplished no more than would have been achieved by one small boy armed with a pebble and a dry stick.

  * * * *

  Martin Rhode felt the distant rumble and thud, heard the flakes of rock dropping from

  the tunnel roof. He learned to operate the clear and perfect screen and watched the efforts to destroy the barrier. He saw that peace had come to the world, and smiled wryly, knowing that for the first time since crude pictures were scratched on the walls of caves, no men were locked in combat anywhere in the world. Here and now was the dream of all Utopians.

  The alien had gained such new facility with Martin’s mind that he could reach him from great distances.

  “My brother has completed his preparations. It may interest you to watch the actual operation. Soon we will be ready.”

  The huge room that had been hollowed out of the rock had been enlarged to an incredible distance. Martin Rhode stood near the glowing hull of the spaceship and saw that six crystals stood at equal intervals around a dull black cube that measured ten feet on a side.

  The thoughts knifed into his mind. “All the matter excavated here has been compressed into that cube. It weighs half a million tons. The atomic structure is partially crushed. Stay where you are. This final operation will completely crush the atomic structure, compressing it to a smaller area than exists at the heart of any known planet. This final operation will compress that cube until it is two centimeters on each side.”

  Martin gasped. Half a million tons contained within a space of eight cubic centimeters!

  “The large block is resting on a metal plate. After the compression operation, the small cube will be supported by the thick metal plate, which is electronically stiffened to hold it. One crystal will be brought closer to it, with its heat potential focused directly upon it. At that point we will attract the attention of our pursuers and wait until they are within range. Every last fragment of the atomic energy in half a million tons of matter will be released instantaneously. This planet will cease to exist, as it becomes, for a brief space, a supernova.”

  Martin Rhode stood and his nails bit into his palms and he gulped the hot, moist air in shallow breaths. The crystals began to glow and a low humming sound filled the chamber. Their glow was pale violet, and as the sound increased, the glow rose through the spectrum. By the time the glow was a hot, angry red, the humming had risen to a shrill scream. The scream faded away and Martin was torn by the agony of hyper
sonics.

  The cube shrank! So slowly at first that he could barely see the change, and then more rapidly. Soon the top surface was level with his eyes, then he could see the top of it. From the cube came an angry crackling, a groan of tortured matter. It was the size of a hatbox. Constantly smaller. He felt his internal body heat rise under the unheard whine of hypersonics and the crystals vibrated until they could be seen only as deep glowing spots.

  Suddenly the pressure stopped. Martin’s knees sagged and he nearly fell. As though hypnotized, he walked slowly forward so that he could see more clearly the tiny cube.

  The thoughts that he intercepted were thoughts of satisfaction, of accomplishment.

  He stood and looked down at the metal plate. The cube was black, and it shone like polished ebony.

  Then he noticed an odd thing. It appeared to be sinking into the metal plate, and the metal seemed to be floating away from it as though suddenly molten.

  Even as he looked down at it, the warm and satisfied thoughts that had come to him changed abruptly to alarm. He caught scattered phrases.

  “ … gravity too great … metal not strong enough … reinforce quickly … full power … “

  Quickly he comprehended that with the full half-million tons of weight, the tiny cube was like the point of a huge pyramid, and by pure weight it was sinking into the plate like the sharp point of a drill.

  He looked and saw one of the grey-white creatures running awkwardly toward an instrument panel which it had left but a few seconds before.

  He remembered the anger that he had witnessed when he had screamed faintly under the shock of the emotional images that had been placed in his mind.

  Even as the creature reached a pulpy hand out toward the instrument panel, Martin Rhode threw his head back and screamed with the full power of his lungs, screamed knowing that the alien vibration would torture them, screamed with the anger and pride and courage of all outraged mankind.

  The running creature stumbled, fell heavily against the instrument panel and tumbled to the floor. The massive metal plates curled slowly up on either side, and then there was an odd noise, like a cork pulled from an enormous bottle through the underside of the plate.

  He screamed again, the sound tearing his throat as he watched the twisted faces of the two creatures.

  When he paused to catch his breath, their thoughts came clearer to him, and in them he sensed resignation, as though someone were saying sadly and softly, “Too late, too late.” Their anger was gone. The crystals were inert. There was a dim sound, the crackling and grinding of rocks, and that diminished into the distance, into the silence. Then there was nothing …

  * * * *

  Martin knew that the tiny cube was sinking into the earth, gaining speed with increased

  momentum, and not even the resources of the two alien creatures could halt its progress.

  They ignored him. They turned, clothed in the light mail, and began to walk toward the ship: two towering grey-white creatures out of an obscene dream of horror. He knew that they ignored him because he was too puny, too powerless.

  With a low sound in his throat he attacked them from behind, and even as he charged, he felt their thoughts, dim because they were not directed at him, thoughts of escape from this place …

  One started to turn even as his hand reached out. The mail ripped like wet cardboard and his hard hand bit through the very substance of the creature, cleaving through the damp, porous flesh. His hand struck the creature in the small of the back, ripped through, staggering Martin with the lack of resistance so that he fell, bounded to his feet to see the creature he had struck moving feebly against the rock floor, his thick body fluids lemon-yellow in the glow from the ship.

  Once again the anger struck him and he bounded toward the remaining one, feeling the paralyzing whine of hypersonics, feeling the sudden heat that invaded his body. But he retained the will, the power to strike one blow before he became motionless. His clenched fist punched through the chain mail, slammed deep into the abdominal cavity of the thing, and it fell back toward the place where the metal plate lay, warped and useless.

  But the faceted eyes still watched him and he stood, his face slack, trying in vain to break the paralysis engendered in him by the vibrations.

  The creature held a grotesque hand over the torn hole in its middle, and tried to get up. Beyond it a wisp of smoke rose from the tiny hole in the plate and an acrid, sulphurous odor filled the cavern.

  There was a rumbling sound, a low roaring, in the bowels of the earth. The smoke danced grey-white in the glow of the ship. Martin Rhode stood frozen and helpless, his stained fist still clenched, his teeth meeting in the flesh of his lower lip.

  The low roar was louder and the metal plate quivered, was suddenly flipped over, as by a careless giant. Martin Rhode suddenly realized that the enormously heavy pellet had plunged down into the molten heart of the planet, providing an escape channel for the lava that boiled far below.

  He was hearing the yowling birth of a volcano—and he was powerless to escape. He would have to remain fixed until the increasing heat boiled the blood in his veins.

  The creature was closer to the opening, and as the first tentative reddish glow seared the mouth of the orifice, it tried feebly to move away.

  But with the old, familiar clarity, the thoughts arrowed into Martin’s mind. He heard the mental laughter of the thing; wild laughter; the absurd, hysterical laughter of a being defeated by a far weaker creature.

  The laughter slowly ended, and in its place came something oddly like compassion.

  “Go!” the thoughts said. “Go quickly!”

  The hypersonic spell was suddenly broken and Martin backed slowly away, his arm shielding his face from the increasing heat.

  A viscous gout of lava arced up, splattered across the dying thing, and in Martin’s mind was the scream, telephathed in naked clarity.

  He raced into the ship, down the long corridor, out the rear port into the tunnel the ship had made, floating and falling while in the ship, clawing raggedly at the smooth walls in his eagerness to leave.

  No cable dangled as a means of escape when he reached the bend; but the explosions had made the hole like a vast funnel. Far above him sparkled the night stars. Sobbing aloud with reaction, with new fear, he clawed his way up where the slope seemed the most gentle, ripping his hands on the jagged rock, tasting the blood in his mouth from his mangled lip. Once a foothold crumpled and he slid, spread-eagled down for a dozen feet, stopped and clawed his way up with new anxiety.

  At last he rolled panting, on the ground, the deep cavity beside him. The air was hot and still. He ran along the road, stumbling, falling, getting up once more, his breath wheezing and rasping in his throat, tears of weakness filling and stinging his eyes.

  It seemed to him as though he were running in a dream. His legs were leaden, heavy, dull, and the pain was a jagged skewer in his side.

  He ran against something solid, collapsed, his fingertips touching the firm warmth of the barrier, the concrete of the road warm and rough against his inflamed cheek.

  Slowly and painfully he got to his feet, trapped in the odd warmth behind the barrier. He strained his eyes, staring into the night, trying to see if the atomic bombs had been tried at that place, leaving dangerous radioactives behind, which might sear him even through the barrier. The earth was pitted with high explosives, but he could see none of the vitrification that would indicate the use of atomics.

  A distant thud and rumble behind him made him turn sharply. A red glare was spewing up into the night, the reflected glow pinkening the clouds that were shunted aside by the invisible barrier. He guessed that he had covered nearly four miles since clambering out of the deep pit. Even at that distance he could clearly make out the glowing white-hot clots of stone thrown toward the sky.

  He was weak and he leaned one hand agains
t the barrier for support. The barrier was indubitably created and maintained by some device aboard the spaceship. The spaceship was near the heart of the inferno …

  Suddenly the support was gone and he sprawled awkwardly, cool air striking his face. The barrier was gone as if turned off by a distant switch, gone as though it had never existed.

  He made his way across the shattered earth. On a high crest he saw the lights of dwellings far ahead. It was so long since man had lived above ground, had been able to show lights during the night.

  Once again there were tears on his face, but this time they were tears of joy and thanksgiving.

  * * * *

  After the conference, held for the sake of convenience in the great hall deep under the mountains, five of them rode up in the elevator: President Rider, Martin Rhode and the three guards.

  The wall was already rolled back in the observation room. Stanford Rider’s shoulders were straighter than they had been in many a day. Martin Rhode was still lean and haggard from his experience.

  The conference of the heads of nations at which Martin Rhode had given a detailed summary of his eight days of captivity had been over for a half-hour.

  “I hope I made them understand, sir,” Martin said.

  They stood side by side looking out across the wild and lovely mountains. “They understood,” Rider said simply.

  “How long will all this last, sir?” Martin asked.

  “What do you mean, Rhode?”

  “Before we got to war again. Before it all starts over again.”

  Rider’s smile was amused. “Ah, the pessimism of youth! No, Rhode, I believe that you have underestimated the effect of all this. You must realize that for a few moments a great and deadly fear was implanted in the minds of men. Fear of the unknown. Fear of distant worlds and stronger beings. We all know now that the universe is peopled by beings more terrible than ourselves, and no man living will forget that fear. It will find its way into song and story.