The Big Eye

by Max Ehrlich

  Suddenly, through the window of the candy store, David saw what he had been watching for.

  The olive-drab Army car came in view. Its siren was silent now, providing no warning. It cruised down Broadway slowly, and David saw the soldiers in it scanning both sides of the street.

  He shrank back from the window guiltily, and the vehicle went by.

  The skin prickled along his back. He was hunted now, and Hawthorne would be the hunter. He was a fugitive, and there would be harsher names the general would call him, deserter, saboteur, traitor. The brief case he held burned hot in his hands.

  The thought occurred to him that if General Hawthorne were informed of his disappearance early enough, he, David, might be stopped at the airport before he had a chance to take off.

  He began to regret the decision he had made, almost wished he had disregarded the Old Man's order to return to California without attending the meeting.

  At any rate, it was too late to do anything about it now. He had to get out to Idlewild, and get there fast.

  David opened the door and was just about to step out on the sidewalk when a cab drew up to the curb. The driver got out and walked into the store, leaving his motor running. David saw that there were two other men in the cab, and for a moment he found it impossible to believe his luck.

  The driver was buying cigarettes from the proprietor when David asked:

  "Got room for one more?"

  "I might," said the man. "Where you going, buddy?"

  "Idlewild Airport." David tried hard to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

  "That's a long way out of town, Buddy," said the driver, his blue eyes studying David greedily. "Clean out to the end of Queens, and these days there ain't any fares coming back. It'll cost you some dough."

  "How much?"

  "A hundred bucks," said the man casually.

  David nodded. He had no disposition to haggle. He had the cash, and it was worth everything for him to get to the airport in a hurry.

  The driver stuck out his hand. "In advance, buddy."

  David paid him, and as the man stuck the money in his pocket he said:

  "I've got a couple of other guys to drop off first. Then we'll get going."

  David squeezed into the back seat beside the other two men, and they started to move down Broadway. The others showed no inclination to talk, and David was grateful. He had a lot to think about.

  First of all, he wondered how the Old Man was going to protect him when he got back to Palomar. The Old Man was one of the world's great scientists, a Nobel prize winner, a power in himself. But even Dr. Dawson couldn't countermand an Army order and get away with it. Not these days.

  It would take some kind of special magic, thought David grimly, to keep him out of trouble now.

  And then there was Carol. . . .

  The cab stopped at Columbus Circle, and one of the men got out. Then the driver swung east on Central Park South, toward Fifth venue.

  As they were rounding Fifty-ninth Street into Fifth, at the Plaza, it happened.

  It began with a noise, a low, deep, rolling ominous rumble.

  The rumble blended into a subterranean roar, a throaty booming sound.

  "Christ!" yelled the driver. "What the hell is that?" He stopped the cab in the middle of the street.

  The booming continued, grew louder, echoed and re-echoed like an artillery salvo. David, in that terrible moment of panic, had a single objective moment, a flash of light on the lens of his eye. He saw a few pedestrians on the avenue, standing still, frozen, listening, their faces blanched with terror.

  And then it came.

  The street seemed suddenly to undulate in a slow wave.

  The taxi began to shiver, then shake, then do a crazy, awful, lurching dance. It tossed from side to side, like a mechanical toy, as David and the others clung to their seats for dear life.

  "It's the Reds," shouted the driver. "The goddamn Reds! They've hit New York!"

  The roaring became louder and was mixed with sharp snapping sounds, as though great blocks of stone were being torn and ripped apart deep underground.

  The buildings started to sway, and dance, and shiver.

  David watched, fascinated, in sweaty terror, unable to move, unable to breathe. He saw whole panes of glass fall from the windows of the Plaza Hotel, the Savoy-Plaza, Tiffany's, Plummer's. They fell in sheets, in a great glassy, deadly rain, crashed to the street. He heard people screaming, saw them running for building entrances. One man fell, his head a mass of blood, almost decapitated by flying glass.

  It thudded and smashed on the roof of the taxi, crashed against the cab windows. The shatterproof glass of the vehicle bent back and cracked but did not break.

  The man sitting next to David suddenly screamed: "Let me out! Let me out of here!"

  David grabbed him, tried to keep him inside. The man's eyes were bulging with fear, they were mad; his lips were flecked with saliva, his teeth bared in an awful grin.

  "God damn you, let me out!"

  He slammed David in the face, ripped open the car door, ran out toward the lobby of the Plaza. He had just passed the statue in the center of the Plaza when a large sliver of glass whistled down and slanted into him. He fell on his face, the blood gurgling from his body.

  Carol!

  David yelled her name above the awful roar. It vibrated on his lips as he was shaken and tossed in the rear of the cab. She'd be inside the RCA Building now, broadcasting in the studios at Radio City, nine blocks away.

  And God knew what was happening within the buildings!

  The marquee of the Savoy-Plaza broke off and hung at a crazy, limp angle over the sidewalk.

  The water mains on the avenue broke, sending geysers of water shooting skyward. From somewhere far downtown there was a tremendous explosion, and a great cone of smoke puffed straight up and mushroomed in a swirling ball.

  Glass was still falling out of the yawning windowpanes, slamming to the road and disintegrating in a shower of slivers, till the road was covered with it.

  There was a single sharp tremor, and then suddenly the vibrating stopped. The roar faded to a rumble, which rolled off in an uptown direction.

  It was still. It was over.

  The driver and David stared at each other stupidly, white-faced, numb with the shock.

  Outside a single pane of glass fell from somewhere far up, splintered in the road with a shattering report.

  "They've started it," said the driver hoarsely. "It's the war -- they've started it. Those Soviet bastards have started it."

  He babbled on in the same vein, incoherently, still in shock, half-hysterical.

  A man ahead, lying in a pool of his own blood, screamed. People started to pour from the entrances of the buildings, crazy with shock, shouting at the top of their lungs uncontrollably, retching at the sight of those who had been caught by flying glass, slipping and slithering over the glass-covered sidewalks.

  They were all running across the street toward the open, toward Central Park.

  The driver started his motor. He stepped on the gas; the car skidded on the slippery pavement. He spun it around in the middle of the Plaza.

  "Driver!" yelled David. "Driver, get me down to Radio City!"

  "You're crazy," babbled the man. "You're creizy, mister. I'm heading for the park, for the open. They may give it to us again any minute. It ain't over yet. We'll get it again. I'm going for the park with everyone else!"

  "But I've got to get to Radio City."

  "Then walk, God damn it, walk!" the driver yelled savagely. "Get outa my cab and walk!"

  David opened the door. The driver, in his hurry to get to the park, hardly slowed down the vehicle. David jumped, fell, cut his hand on a piece of glass. He lay there for a moment, stunned, inert.

  Then he looked at his hand. The blood was streaming from it, but luckily it was a superficial cut. He bound it with his handkerchief, unsteadily got to his feet.

  Then he dazedly realized that
he was without his briefcase. He had left it in the taxi, and the cab was gone.

  To hell with it, thought David. It doesn't matter now. It's too late for that and everything else.

  Vve got to find Carol.

  He began to run down Fifth Avenue.

  It was hard going, slippery going. The glass-covered pavement was treacherous; he almost fell headlong twice. He dodged a number of white-faced pedestrians running in the opposite direction toward the park, heard others on the sidewalk and on the road, crying out, hurt.

  But he did not stop.

  He ran blindly through the spray of a spurting water main at Fifty-seventh Street, came out drenched to the skin, moved past the once proud giants of the most glamorous street in the world, Bonwit Teller's, Tailored Woman, Cartier's, DePinna, all long closed, their plate windows shattered out.

  At Best and Company he saw what appeared to be a group of victims, all naked, flung crazily over the sidewalk. As he came nearer he saw that they were display mannikins which had been stripped and left in the window when the store had closed.

  Saint Patrick's was windowless, but its doors were wide open, and people were running inside for shelter, anywhere to get ofE the street.

  David fought for air; his lungs ached as he ran doggedly on, turning the corner into Fiftieth and Rockefeller Plaza.

  A siren sounded, then another.

  An Army truck came roaring up Fifth, its solid rubber wheels crunching the thick carpet of broken glass. It was filled with goggled men in monstrous costume: galoshes, gloves, coveralls, and masks. They were hunched over small black boxes and listening to earphones.

  This was the Radiological Squad, and these absurd gnomes were the Geiger men.

  The clang of ambulances added to the din; the special flying squads of first-aid men began to roll up in trucks. These were the catastrophe units of the Army, specifically designed for disaster action.

  The wounded city began to swarm with mobile units carrying uniformed men; it was obvious that the Army had taken over.

  David came into the center of Rockefeller Plaza.

  It was a weird sight.

  The pavements were hidden by piles of jagged, broken glass. The towering buildings surrounding the square -- the RCA Building, Time and Life, Eastern Airlines, Associated Press -- all glowered down blindly, their glass eyes gouged out.

  The sunken rectangular plaza, which once had served as a skating rink in winter and a cafe garden in summer, was like a box of broken glass.

  The great statue of Prometheus, standing watch over the sunken plaza, tilted crazily. David caught a glimpse of the legend:

  Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that has proved to mortals a means to mighty ends.

  David ran into the RCA Building, where the broadcasting studios were located.

  It was jammed with people milling around, herdlike, afraid to go out, expecting another blow. They were white-faced, shouting, talking hysterically. They had been lucky. They had been safe within the building, and there was no apparent damage to the interior of the great corridor.

  The babel rose and fell:

  "Earthquake -- felt like an earthquake."

  "Earthquake, hell! There's never been an earthquake in New York, not even a tremor. There can't be. This town's built on solid rock!"

  "It was the Reds! This is just the beginning!"

  "Everybody said New York would get it first. Well, we have!"

  "Must have been a bomb planted deep in the subway. Or maybe in the river."

  "Tried to phone home. The phones are all dead."

  "They may hit us again -- any minute now."

  "God, what if this whole place is radioactive right now? Maybe it is. Maybe we don't know it. If it is, we're done!"

  "I could have got out. I could have got out a week ago. Bui like a damned fool, I stayed."

  "Charlie, we're done for. We're standing here and dying. It's the radiation. It gets into the marrow of your bones, eats up the blood, gives you tumors like cancer. God, we're standing here and taking it and dying!"

  The place was alive with white helmeted military police trying to keep the crowd in order.

  David tried to get to the studio elevators. Only one was in operation, and that was guarded by an MP. He flung David back.

  "Better check with the sergeant at the information booth, buddy."

  David told the sergeant that he was looking for a Carol Kenny, an actress who, as far as he knew, had been broadcasting in some studio on the upper floors.

  The sergeant wasn't inclined to be of much help; he let David know that he didn't have any time at the moment hunting up girl friends for a lot of guys.

  "Remember?" said the sergeant. "We just had a little trouble around here."

  David suddenly recalled his priority. It had been countersigned by General Hawthorne. He showed it to the sergeant, who immediately became co-operative. He opened a tally book, ran a thick finger down the last page.

  "Carol Kenny. Yeah. She had a short rehearsal and then went out."

  "She went out?"

  "That's right. Just before this thing went off. With an announcer named Ray Graves, it says here. Probably went out for cofiee or something. They were due back for broadcast ten minutes ago, but I guess that's out. They won't be broadcasting around here for a little while."

  So Carol had gone out. Carol had gone out into the street. And that deadly rain of glass . . .

  David felt a little ill. He thought. Maybe nothing happened, maybe she found shelter, maybe she's all right. Maybe . . .

  He decided to wait.

  An hour passed, and Carol did not show up.

  He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. There was no way of finding out what had happened to her, not the way things were now. And he had to get back to Palomar. Something big was going on out there. The Old Man was waiting for him.

  He could only hope that Carol was all right, that she hadn't been caught in the street, that she was alive.

  David waited another fifteen minutes, then contacted the sergeant at the information desk, told him that he had to get out to Idlewild Airport and that it was an urgent matter of military importance.

  The sergeant was very helpful now; the name of Matt Hawthorne was magic. He escorted David through the Forty-ninth Street entrance, hailed an Army car, gave the corporal driving it an order.

  "Take this man to the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, Corporal." He turned to David. "There's a staging point there for Army vehicles moving to the island, sir. If you'll show your priority to the officer in charge at the bridge, I'm sure you'll be able to get a hitch."

  An hour later David walked into the terminal at Idlewild. He had just reached the reservations counter when he heard:

  "David!"

  He whirled and saw Carol running toward him. Stunned, unable to believe that it was she, he stood there, gaping foolishly. And then she was in his arms.

  "Carol, what happened? How did you get here?"

  "Darling, darling, I thought I'd go out of my mind. I didn't know what happened to you." She was crying on his shoulder. "All I knew was that you were coming out here to the airport. But the) didn't have any record of your leaving -- and I waited and waited, and finally I thought, back in town, maybe you'd been hurt, maybe you were dead. Oh, David!"

  It was a little while before she was coherent enough to tell him the rest.

  "I'd just gone out for breakfast, David. With our announcer, Ray Graves. We usually do that between rehearsal and broadcast on a morning show. Anyway, we went over to Sixth Avenue, and we'd just gone into the restaurant when it happened. Everything. After that I knew there wouldn't be any broadcast or anything else. And I kept thinking of you. You'd be out here at the airport, or on the way out. I had to meet you then, to go out with you to California, and Ray -- Ray was wonderful. First we went to his place to see if his wife was all right, and she was. Then he drove me out here, went way up to the Triborough Bridge and up the parkway, that way, b
ecause the Army wouldn't let any civilian cars cross the Fifty-ninth. Oh, David, I was so afraid something had happened to you. I've been here, waiting and waiting for -- well, it seems years!"

  There was still the problem of getting a seat on a plane for Carol. David had his reservation and priority, but the reservations clerk swore that he couldn't assign another seat on the next plane going to the Coast.

  At the last moment, however, there was a cancellation. One of the passengers hadn't been able to make it, had been delayed in town for a reason unknown. But it could be guessed at, and the guess was pretty grim.