Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  He walked over to a waiting group and clapped one man on the shoulder. "Well, how does it feel to be an ant?" he inquired and laughed loudly at the jest. "You and your millions of dollars, your acres of factories, your steamships, railroads!"

  The man looked at him strangely and edged cautiously away. His eyes, like those of the others, had a dazed, stricken look. A woman was sobbing softly as she clung to her husband. From the streets far below came a quavering shrillness of sound.

  The planes gathered in climbing circles. Far on the horizon were four tiny glinting specks....

  * * * * *

  Thurston stared until his eyes were stinging. He was walking in a waking sleep as he made his way to the stone coping beyond which was the street far below. He was dead--dead!--right this minute. What were a few minutes more or less? He could climb over the coping; none of the huddled, fear-gripped group would stop him. He could step out into space and fool them, the devils. They could never kill him....

  What was it MacGregor had said? Good egg, MacGregor! "But we can die fighting...." Yes, that was it--die fighting. But he couldn't fight; he could only wait. Well, what were the others doing, down there in the streets--in their homes? He could wait with them, die with them....

  He straightened slowly and drew one long breath. He looked steadily and unafraid at the advancing specks. They were larger now. He could see their round forms. The planes were less noisy: they were far up in the heights--climbing--climbing.

  The bulbs came slantingly down. They were separating. Thurston wondered vaguely.

  What had they done in Berlin? Yes, he remembered. Placed themselves at the four corners of a great square and wiped out the whole city in one explosion. Four bombs dropped at the same instant while they shot up to safety in the thin air. How did they communicate? Thought transference, most likely. Telepathy between those great brains, one to another. A plane was falling. It curved and swooped in a trail of flame, then fell straight toward the earth. They were fighting....

  * * * * *

  Thurston stared above. There were clusters of planes diving down from on high. Machine-guns stuttered faintly. "Machine-guns--toys! Brave, that was it! 'We can die fighting.'" His thoughts were far off; it was like listening to another's mind.

  The air was filled with swelling clouds. He saw them before the blast struck where he stood. The great building shuddered at the impact. There were things falling from the clouds, wrecks of planes, blazing and shattered. Still came others; he saw them faintly through the clouds. They came in from the West; they had gone far to gain altitude. They drove down from the heights--the enemy had drifted--they were over the bay.

  More clouds, and another blast thundering at the city. There were specks, Thurston saw, falling into the water.

  Again the invaders came down from the heights where they had escaped their own shattering attack. There was the faint roar of motors behind, from the south. The squadron from Washington passed overhead.

  They surely had seen the fate that awaited. And they drove on to the attack, to strike at an enemy that shot instantly into the sky leaving crashing destruction about the torn dead.

  "Now!" said Cyrus Thurston aloud.

  * * * * *

  The big bulbs were back. They floated easily in the air, a plume of vapor billowing beneath. They were ranging to the four corners of a great square.

  One plane only was left, coming in from the south, a lone straggler, late for the fray. One plane! Thurston's shoulders sagged heavily. All they had left! It went swiftly overhead.... It was fast--fast. Thurston suddenly knew. It was Riley in that plane.

  "Go back, you fool!"--he was screaming at the top of his voice--"Back--back--you poor, damned, decent Irishman!"

  Tears were streaming down his face. "His buddies," Riley had said. And this was Riley, driving swiftly in, alone, to avenge them....

  He saw dimly as the swift plane sped over the first bulb, on and over the second. The soft roar of gas from the machines drowned the sound of his engine. The plane passed them in silence to bank sharply toward the third corner of the forming square.

  He was looking them over, Thurston thought. And the damn beasts disregarded so contemptible an opponent. He could still leave. "For God's sake, Riley, beat it--escape!"

  Thurston's mind was solely on the fate of the lone voyager--until the impossible was borne in upon him.

  The square was disrupted. Three great bulbs were now drifting. The wind was carrying them out toward the bay. They were coming down in a long, smooth descent. The plane shot like a winged rocket at the fourth great, shining ball. To the watcher, aghast with sudden hope, it seemed barely to crawl.

  "The ray! The ray...." Thurston saw as if straining eyes had pierced through the distance to see the invisible. He saw from below the swift plane, the streaming, intangible ray. That was why Riley had flown closely past and above them--the ray poured from below. His throat was choking him, strangling....

  * * * * *

  The last enemy took alarm. Had it seen the slow sinking of its companions, failed to hear them in reply to his mental call? The shining pear shape shot violently upward; the attacking plane rolled to a vertical bank as it missed the threatening clouds of exhaust. "What do you know about dog-fights?" And Riley had grinned ... Riley belonged!

  The bulb swelled before Thurston's eyes in its swift descent. It canted to one side to head off the struggling plane that could never escape, did not try to escape. The steady wings held true upon their straight course. From above came the silver meteor; it seemed striking at the very plane itself. It was almost upon it before it belched forth the cushioning blast of gas.

  Through the forming clouds a plane bored in swiftly. It rolled slowly, was flying upside down. It was under the enemy! Its ray.... Thurston was thrown a score of feet away to crash helpless into the stone coping by the thunderous crash of the explosion.

  There were fragments falling from a dense cloud--fragments of curved and silvery metal ... the wing of a plane danced and fluttered in the air....

  "He fired its bombs," whispered Thurston in a shaking voice. "He killed the other devils where they lay--he destroyed this with its own explosive. He flew upside down to shoot up with the ray, to set off its shells...."

  His mind was fumbling with the miracle of it. "Clever pilot, Riley, in a dog-fight...." And then he realized.

  Cyrus Thurston, millionaire sportsman, sank slowly, numbly to the roof of the Equitable Building that still stood. And New York was still there ... and the whole world....

  He sobbed weakly, brokenly. Through his dazed brain flashed a sudden, mind-saving thought. He laughed foolishly through his sobs.

  "And you said he'd die horribly, Mac, a horrible death." His head dropped upon his arms, unconscious--and safe--with the rest of humanity.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE EYE OF ALLAH

  By Charles W. Diffin

  On the fatal seventh of September a certain Secret Service man sat in the President's chair and--looked back into the Eye of Allah.

  Blinky Collins' part in this matter was very brief. Blinky lasted just long enough to make a great discovery, to brag about it as was Blinky's way, and then pass on to find his reward in whatever hereafter is set apart for weak-minded crooks whose heads are not hard enough to withstand the crushing impact of a lead-filled pacifier.

  The photograph studio of Blinky Collins was on the third floor of a disreputable building in an equally unsavory part of Chicago. There were no tinted pictures of beautiful blondes nor of stern, square-jawed men of affairs in Blinky's reception room. His clients, who came furtively there, were strongly opposed to having their pictures taken--they came for other purposes. For the photographic work of Mr. Collins was strictly commercial--and peculiar. There were fingerprints to be photographed and identified for purpose of private revenge, photographs of people to be merged and repictured in compromising closeness for reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray photography was included in
the scope of his work.

  * * * * *

  The great discovery came when a box was brought to the dingy room and Mr. Collins was asked to show what was inside it without the bother and inconvenience of disturbing lock and seals. The X-Ray machine sizzled above it, and a photographic plate below was developed to show a string of round discs that could easily have been pearls.

  The temporary possessor of the box was pleased with the result--but Blinky was puzzled. For the developer had brought out an odd result. There were the pearls as expected, but, too, there was a small picture superimposed--a picture of a bald head and a body beneath seated beside a desk. The picture had been taken from above looking straight down, and head and desk were familiar.

  Blinky knew them both. The odd part was that he knew also that both of them were at that instant on the ground floor of the same disreputable building, directly under and two floors below his workshop.

  Like many great discoveries, this of Blinky's came as the result of an accident. He had monkeyed with the X-Ray generator and had made certain substitutions. And here was the result--a bald head and a desk, photographed plainly through two heavy wood floors. Blinky scratched his own head in deep thought. And then he repeated the operation.

  This time there was a blonde head close to the bald one, and two people were close to the desk and to each other. Blinky knew then that there were financial possibilities in this new line of portrait work.

  It was some time before the rat eyes of the inventor were able to see exactly what they wanted through this strange device, but Blinky learned. And he fitted a telescope back of the ray and found that he could look along it and see as if through a great funnel what was transpiring blocks and blocks away; he looked where he would, and brick walls or stone were like glass when the new ray struck through them.

  Blinky never knew what he had--never dreamed of the tremendous potentialities in his oscillating ethereal ray that had a range and penetration beyond anything known. But he knew, in a vague way, that this ray was a channel for light waves to follow, and he learned that he could vary the range of the ray and that whatever light was shown at the end of that range came to him as clear and distinct as if he were there in the room.

  He sat for hours, staring through the telescope. He would train the device upon a building across the street, then cut down the current until the unseen vibration penetrated inside the building. If there was nothing there of interest he would gradually increase the power, and the ray would extend out and still out into other rooms and beyond them to still others. Blinky had a lot of fun, but he never forgot the practical application of the device--practical, that is, from the distorted viewpoint of a warped mind.

  * * * * *

  "I've heard about your machine," said a pasty-faced man one day, as he sat in Blinky's room, "and I think it's a lot of hooey. But I'd give just one grand to know who is with the district attorney this minute."

  "Where is he?" asked Blinky.

  "Two blocks down the street, in the station house ... and if Pokey Barnard is with him, the lousy stool-pigeon--"

  Blinky paid no attention to the other's opinion of one Pokey Barnard; he was busy with a sputtering blue light and a telescope behind a shield of heavy lead.

  "Put your money on the table," he said, finally: "there's the dicks ... and there's Pokey. Take a look--"

  It was some few minutes later that Blinky learned of another valuable feature in his ray. He was watching the district attorney when the pasty-faced man brushed against a hanging incandescent light. There was a bit of bare wire exposed, and as it swung into the ray the fuses in the Collins studio blew out instantly.

  But the squinting eyes at the telescope had seen something first. They had seen the spare form of the district attorney throw itself from the chair as if it had been dealt a blow--or had received an electric shock.

  Blinky put in new fuses--heavier ones--and tried it again on another subject. And again the man at the receiving end got a shot of current that sent him sprawling.

  "Now what the devil--" demanded Blinky. He stood off and looked at the machine, the wire with its 110 volts, the invisible ray that was streaming out.

  "It's insulated, the machine is," he told his caller, "so the juice won't shoot back if I keep my hands off; but why," he demanded profanely, "don't it short on the first thing it touches?"

  * * * * *

  He was picturing vaguely a ray like a big insulated cable, with light and current both traveling along a core at its center, cut off, insulated by the ray, so that only the bare end where the ray stopped could make contact.

  "Some more of them damn electrons," he hazarded; then demanded of his caller: "But am I one hell of a smart guy? Or am I?"

  There was no denying this fact. The pasty-faced man told Blinky with lurid emphasis just how smart. He had seen with his own eyes and this was too good to keep.

  He paid his one grand and departed, first to make certain necessary arrangements for the untimely end of one Pokey Barnard, squealer, louse, et cetera, et cetera, and then to spread the glad news through the underworld of Collins' invention.

  That was Blinky's big mistake, as was shown a few days later. Not many had taken seriously the account of the photographer's experiments, but there was one who had, as was evident. A bearded man, whose eyes stared somewhat wildly from beneath a shock of frowzy hair, entered the Collins work-room and locked the door behind him. His English was imperfect, but the heavy automatic in his hand could not be misunderstood. He forced the trembling inventor to give a demonstration, and the visitor's face showed every evidence of delight.

  "The cur-rent," he demanded with careful words, "the electreek cur-rent, you shall do also. Yes?"

  Again the automatic brought quick assent, and again the visitor showed his complete satisfaction. Showed it by slugging the inventor quietly and efficiently and packing the apparatus in the big suitcase he had brought.

  Blinky Collins had been fond of that machine. He had found a form of television with uncounted possibilities, and it had been for him the perfect instrument of a blackmailing Peeping Tom; he had learned the secret of directed wireless transmission of power and had seen it as a means for annoying his enemies. Yet Blinky Collins--the late Blinky Collins--offered no least objection, when the bearded man walked off with the machine. His body, sprawled awkwardly in the corner, was quite dead....

  * * * * *

  And now, some two months later, in his Washington office, the Chief of the United States Secret Service pushed a paper across his desk to a waiting man and leaned back in his chair.

  "What would you make of that, Del?" he asked.

  Robert Delamater reached leisurely for the paper. He regarded it with sleepy, half-closed eyes.

  There was a crude drawing of an eye at the top. Below was printed--not written--a message in careful, precise letters: "Take warning. The Eye of Allah is upon you. You shall instructions receive from time to time. Follow them. Obey."

  Delamater laughed. "Why ask me what I think of a nut letter like that. You've had plenty of them just as crazy."

  "This didn't come to me," said the Chief; "it was addressed to the President of the United States."

  "Well, there will be others, and we will run the poor sap down. Nothing out of the ordinary I should say."

  "That is what I thought--at first. Read this--" The big, heavy-set man pushed another and similar paper across the desk. "This one was addressed to the Secretary of State."

  Delamater did not read it at once. He held both papers to the light; his fingers touched the edges only.

  "No watermark," he mused; "ordinary white writing stock--sold in all the five and ten cent stores. Tried these for fingerprints I suppose?".

  "Read it," suggested the Chief.

  "Another picture of an eye," said Delamater aloud, and read: "'Warning. You are dealing with an emissary from a foreign power who is an unfriend of my country. See him no more. This is the first and last warning. The Eye of All
ah watches.'

  "And what is this below--? 'He did not care for your cigars, Mr. Secretary. Next time--but there must be no next time.'"

  * * * * *

  Delamater read slowly--lazily. He seemed only slightly interested except when he came to the odd conclusion of the note. But the Chief knew Delamater and knew how that slow indolence could give place to a feverish, alert concentration when work was to be done.

  "Crazy as a loon," was the man's conclusion as he dropped the papers upon the desk.

  "Crazy," his chief corrected, "like a fox! Read the last line again; then get this--

  "The Secretary of State _is_ meeting with a foreign agent who is here very much incog. Came in as a servant of a real ambassador. Slipped quietly into Washington, and not a soul knew he was here. He met the Secretary in a closed room; no one saw him come or leave--";

  "Well, the Secretary tells me that in that room where nobody could see he offered this man a cigar. His visitor took it, tried to smoke it, apologized--and lit one of his own vile cigarettes."

  "Hm-m!" Delamater sat a little straighter in his chair; his eyebrows were raised now in questioning astonishment. "Dictaphone? Some employee of the Department listening in?"

  "Impossible."

  "Now that begins to be interesting," the other conceded. His eyes had lost their sleepy look. "Want me to take it on?"

  "Later. Right now. I want you to take this visiting gentleman under your personal charge. Here is the name and the room and hotel where he is staying. He is to meet with the Secretary to-night--he knows where. You will get to him unobserved--absolutely unseen; I can leave that to you. Take him yourself to his appointment, and take him without a brass band. But have what men you want tail you and watch out for spies.... Then, when he is through, bring him back and deliver him safely to his room. Compray?"

  "Right--give me Wilkins and Smeed. I rather think I can get this bird there and back without being seen, but perhaps they may catch Allah keeping tabs on us at that." He laughed amusedly as he took the paper with the name and address.