Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

Frank was at somewhat of a loss. This flareup of Nora's was entirely unexpected. He eased toward the place the flashlight had shown the bed to be. Her legs hit its edge and she sat down.

  "You--you want me to sleep in the other one?" he asked.

  "Of course," Nora replied with marked bitterness. "I'm afraid you wouldn't be very comfortable in with me."

  There was a time of silence. Frank took off his jacket, shirt and trousers. It was funny, he thought. He'd spent his money, been drugged, beaten and robbed as a result of one objective--to get into a room alone with a girl. And a girl not nearly as nice as Nora at that. Now, here he was alone with a real dream, and he was tongue-tied. It didn't make sense. He shrugged. Life was crazy sometimes.

  He heard the rustle of garments and wondered how much Nora was taking off. Then he dropped his trousers, forgotten, to the floor. "Did you hear that?"

  "Yes. It's that--"

  Frank went to the window, raised the sash. The moaning sound came in louder, but it was from far distance. "I think that's out around Evanston."

  Frank felt a warmth on his cheek and he realized Nora was by his side, leaning forward. He put an arm around her and they stood unmoving in complete silence. Although their ears were straining for the sound coming down from the north, Frank could not be oblivious of the warm flesh under his hand.

  Nora's breathing was soft against his cheek. She said, "Listen to how it rises and falls. It's almost as though they were using it to talk with. The inflection changes."

  "I think that's what it is. It's coming from a lot of different places. It stops in some places and starts in others."

  "It's so--weird."

  "Spooky," Frank said, "but in a way it makes me feel better."

  "I don't see how it could." Nora pressed closer to him.

  "It does though, because of what I was afraid of. I had it figured out that the city was going to blow up--that a bomb had been planted that they couldn't find, or something like that. Now, I'm pretty sure it's something else. I'm willing to bet we'll be alive in the morning."

  Nora thought that over in silence. "If that's the way it is--if some kind of invaders are coming down from the north--isn't it stupid to stay here? Even if we are tired we ought to be trying to get away from them."

  "I was thinking the same thing. I'll go and talk to Wilson."

  They crossed the room together and he left her by the bed and went on to the door. Then he remembered he was in his shorts and went back and got his trousers. After he'd put them on, he wondered why he'd bothered. He opened the door.

  Something warned him--some instinct--or possibly his natural fear and caution coincided with the presence of danger. He heard the footsteps on the carpeting down the hall--soft, but unmistakably footsteps. He called, "Wilson--Wilson--that you?"

  The creature outside threw caution to the winds, Frank sensed rather than heard a body hurtling toward the door. A shrill, mad laughter raked his ears and the weight of a body hit the door.

  Frank drew strength from pure panic as he threw his weight against the panel, but perhaps an inch or two from the latch the door wavered from opposing strength. Through the narrow opening he could feel the hoarse breath of exertion in his face. Insane giggles and curses sounded through the black stillness.

  Frank had the wild conviction he was losing the battle, and added strength came from somewhere. He heaved and there was a scream and he knew he had at least one finger caught between the door and the jamb. He threw his weight against the door with frenzied effort and heard the squash of the finger. The voice kited up to a shriek of agony, like that of a wounded animal.

  Even with his life at stake, and the life of Nora, Frank could not deliberately slice the man's fingers off. Even as he fought the urge, and called himself a fool, he allowed the door to give slightly inward. The hand was jerked to safety.

  At that moment another door opened close by and Jim Wilson's voice boomed: "What the hell's going on out here?"

  Simultaneous with this, racing footsteps receded down the hall and from the well of the stairway came a whining cry of pain.

  "Jumping jees!" Wilson bellowed. "We got company. We ain't alone!"

  "He tried to get into my room."

  "You shouldn't have opened the door. Nora okay?"

  "Yeah. She's all right."

  "Tell her to stay in her room. And you do the same. We'd be crazy to go after that coot in the dark. He'll keep 'til morning."

  Frank closed the door, double-locked it and went back to Nora's bed. He could hear a soft sobbing. He reached down and pulled back the covers and the sobbing came louder. Then he was down on the bed and she was in his arms.

  She cried until the panic subsided, while he held her and said nothing. After a while she got control of herself. "Don't leave me, Frank," she begged. "Please don't leave me."

  He stroked her shoulder. "I won't," he whispered.

  They lay for a long time in utter silence, each seeking strength in the other's closeness. The silence was finally broken by Nora.

  "Frank?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you want me?"

  He did not answer.

  "If you want me you can have me, Frank."

  Frank said nothing.

  "I told you today that I tried to commit suicide. Remember?"

  "I remember."

  "That was the truth. I did it because I was tired of everything. Because I've made a terrible mess of things. I didn't want to go on living."

  He remained silent, holding her.

  As she spoke again, her voice sharpened. "Can't you understand what I'm telling you? I'm no good! I'm just a bum! Other men have had me! Why shouldn't you? Why should you be cheated out of what other men have had?"

  He remained silent. After a few moments, Nora said, "For God's sake, talk! Say something!"

  "How do you feel about it now? Will you try again to kill yourself the next chance you get?"

  "No--no, I don't think I'll ever try it again."

  "Then things must look better."

  "I don't know anything about that. I just don't want to do it now."

  She did not urge him this time and he was slow in speaking. "It's kind of funny. It really is. Don't get the idea I've got morals. I haven't. I've had my share of women. I was working on one the night they slipped me the mickey--the night before I woke up to this tomb of a city. But now--tonight--it's kind of different. I feel like I want to protect you. Is that strange?"

  "No," she said quietly. "I guess not."

  They lay there silently, their thoughts going off into the blackness of the sepulchral night. After a long while, Nora's even breathing told him she was asleep. He got up quietly, covered her, and went to the other bed.

  But before he slept, the weird wailings from out Evanston way came again--rose and fell in that strange conversational cadence--then died away into nothing.

  * * * * *

  Frank awoke to the first fingers of daylight. Nora still slept. He dressed and stood for some moments with his hand on the door knob. Then he threw the bolt and cautiously opened the door.

  The hallway was deserted. At this point it came to him forcibly that he was not a brave man. All his life, he realized, he had avoided physical danger and had refused to recognize the true reason for so doing. He had classified himself as a man who dodged trouble through good sense; that the truly civilized person went out of his way to keep the peace.

  He realized now that that attitude was merely salve for his ego. He faced the empty corridor and did not wish to proceed further. But stripped of the life-long alibi, he forced himself to walk through the doorway, close the door softly, and move toward the stairs.

  He paused in front of the door behind which Jim Wilson and Minna were no doubt sleeping. He stared at it wistfully. It certainly would not be a mark of cowardice to get Jim Wilson up under circumstances such as these. In fact, he would be a fool not to do so.

  Stubbornness forbade such a move, however. He walked softly toward th
e place where the hallway dead-ended and became a cross-corridor. He made the turn carefully, pressed against one wall. There was no one in sight. He got to the stairway and started down.

  His muscles and nerves tightened with each step. When he reached the lobby he was ready to jump sky-high at the drop of a pin.

  But no one dropped any pins, and he reached the modernistic glass doorway to the drugstore with only silence screaming in his ears. The door was unlocked. One hinge squeaked slightly as he pushed the door inward.

  It was in the drugstore that Frank found signs of the fourth-floor intruder. An inside counter near the prescription department was red with blood. Bandages and first-aid supplies had been unboxed and thrown around with abandon. Here the man had no doubt administered to his smashed hand.

  But where had he gone? Asleep, probably, in one of the rooms upstairs. Frank wished fervently for a weapon. Beyond doubt there was not a gun left in the Loop.

  A gun was not the only weapon ever created, though, and Frank searched the store and found a line of pocket knives still in neat boxes near the perfume counter.

  He picked four of the largest and found, also, a wooden-handled, lead-tipped bludgeon, used evidently for cracking ice.

  Thus armed, he went out through the revolving door. He walked through streets that were like death under the climbing sun. Through streets and canyons of dead buildings upon which the new daylight had failed to shed life or diminish the terror of the night past.

  At Dearborn he found the door to the Tribune Public Service Building locked. He used the ice breaker to smash a glass door panel. The crash of the glass on the cement was an explosion in the screaming silence. He went inside. Here the sense of desolation was complete; brought sharply to focus, probably, by the pigeon holes filled with letters behind the want-ad counter. Answers to a thousand and one queries, waiting patiently for someone to come after them.

  Before going to the basement and the back files of the Chicago Tribune, Frank climbed to the second floor and found what he thought might be there--a row of teletype machines with a file-board hooked to the side of each machine.

  Swiftly, he stripped the copy sheets off each board, made a bundle of them and went back downstairs. He covered the block back to the hotel at a dog-trot, filled with a sudden urge to get back to the fourth floor as soon as possible.

  He stopped in the drugstore and filled his pockets with soap, a razor, shaving cream and face lotion. As an afterthought, he picked up a lavish cosmetic kit that retailed, according to the price tag, for thirty-eight dollars plus tax.

  He let himself back into the room and closed the door softly. Nora rolled over, exposing a shoulder and one breast. The breast held his gaze for a full minute. Then a feeling of guilt swept him and he went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Luckily, a supply tank on the roof still contained water and Frank was able to shower and shave. Dressed again, he felt like a new man. But he regretted not hunting up a haberdashery shop and getting himself a clean shirt.

  Nora had still not awakened when he came out of the bathroom. He went to the bed and stood looking down at her for some time. Then he touched her shoulder.

  "Wake up. It's morning."

  Nora stirred. Her eyes opened, but Frank got the impression she did not really awaken for several seconds. Her eyes went to his face, to the window, back to his face.

  "What time is it?"

  "I don't know. I think it's around eight o'clock."

  Nora stretched both arms luxuriously. As she sat up, her slip fell back into place and Frank got the impression she hadn't even been aware of her partial nudity.

  She stared up at him, clarity dawning in her eyes, "You're all cleaned up."

  "I went downstairs and got some things."

  "You went out--alone?"

  "Why not. We can't stay in here all day. We've got to hit the road and get out of here. We've overshot our luck already."

  "But that--that man in the hall last night! You shouldn't have taken a chance."

  "I didn't bump into him. I found the place he fixed his hand, down in the drugstore."

  Frank went to the table and came back with the cosmetic set. He put it in Nora's lap. "I brought this up for you."

  Surprise and true pleasure were mixed in her expression. "That was very nice. I think I'd better get dressed."

  Frank turned toward the window where he had left the bundle of teletype clips. "I've got a little reading to do."

  As he sat down, he saw, from the corner of his eye, a flash of slim brown legs moving toward the bathroom. Just inside the door, Nora turned. "Are Jim Wilson and Minna up yet?"

  "I don't think so."

  Nora's eyes remained on him. "I think you were very brave to go downstairs alone. But it was a foolish thing to do. You should have waited for Jim Wilson."

  "You're right about it being foolish. But I had to go."

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm not brave at all. Maybe that was the reason."

  Nora left the bathroom door open about six inches and Frank heard the sound of the shower. He sat with the papers in his hand wondering about the water. When he had gone to the bathroom the thought had never occurred to him. It was natural that it should. Now he wondered about it. Why was it still running? After a while he considered the possibility of the supply tank on the roof.

  Then he wondered about Nora. It was strange how he could think about her personally and impersonally at the same time. He remembered her words of the previous night. They made her--he shied from the term. What was the old cliche? A woman of easy virtue.

  What made a woman of that type, he wondered. Was it something inherent in their makeup? That partially opened door was symbolic somehow. He was sure that many wives closed the bathroom door upon their husbands; did it without thinking, instinctively. He was sure Nora had left it partially open without thinking. Could a behavior pattern be traced from such an insignificant thing?

  He wondered about his own attitude toward Nora. He had drawn away from what she'd offered him during the night. And yet from no sense of disgust. There was certainly far more about Nora to attract than to repel.

  Morals, he realized dimly, were imposed--or at least functioned--for the protection of society. With society gone--vanished overnight--did the moral code still hold?

  If and when they got back among masses of people, would his feelings toward Nora change? He thought not. He would marry her, he told himself firmly, as quick as he'd marry any other girl. He would not hold what she was against her. I guess I'm just fundamentally unmoral myself, he thought, and began reading the news clips.

  * * * * *

  There was a knock on the door accompanied by the booming voice of Jim Wilson. "You in there! Ready for breakfast?"

  Frank got up and walked toward the door. As he did so, the door to the bathroom closed.

  Jim Wilson wore a two-day growth of beard and it didn't seem to bother him at all. As he entered the room he rubbed his hands together in great gusto. "Well, where'll we eat, folks? Let's pick the classiest restaurant in town. Nothing but the best for Minna here."

  He winked broadly as Minna, expressionless and silent, followed him in exactly as a shadow would have followed him and sat primly down in a straight-backed chair by the wall.

  "We'd better start moving south," Frank said, "and not bother about breakfast."

  "Getting scared?" Jim Wilson asked.

  "You're damn right I'm scared--now. We're right in the middle of a big no-man's-land."

  "I don't get you."

  At that moment the bathroom door opened and Nora came out. Jim Wilson forgot about the question he'd asked. He let forth a loud whistle of appreciation. Then he turned his eyes on Frank and his thought was crystal clear. He was envying Frank the night just passed.

  A sudden irritation welled up in Frank Brooks, a distinct feeling of disgust. "Let's start worrying about important things--our lives. Or don't you consider your life very important?"

&
nbsp; Jim Wilson seemed puzzled. "What the hell's got into you? Didn't you sleep good?"

  "I went down the block this morning and found some teletype machines. I've just been reading the reports."

  "What about that guy that tried to get into your room last night?"

  "I didn't see him. I didn't see anybody. But I know why the city's been cleaned out." Frank went back to the window and picked up the sheaf on clips he had gone through. Jim Wilson sat down on the edge of the bed, frowning. Nora followed Frank and perched on the edge of the chair he dropped into.

  "The city going to blow up?" Wilson asked.

  "No. We've been invaded by some form of alien life."

  "Is that what the papers said?"

  "It was the biggest and fastest mass evacuation ever attempted. I pieced the reports together. There was hell popping around here during the two days we--we waited it out."

  "Where did they all go?" Nora asked.

  "South. They've evacuated a forty-mile strip from the lake west. The first Terran defense line is set up in northern Indiana."

  "What do you mean--Terra."

  "It's a word that means Earth--this planet. The invaders came from some other planet, they think--at least from no place on Earth."

  "That's the silliest damn thing I ever heard of," Wilson said.

  "A lot of people probably thought the same thing," Frank replied. "Flying saucers were pretty common. Nobody thought they were anything and nobody paid much attention. Then they hit--three days ago--and wiped out every living soul in three little southern Michigan towns. From there they began spreading out. They--"

  Each of them heard the sound at the same time. A faint rumble, increasing swiftly into high thunder. They moved as one to the window and saw four jet planes, in formation, moving across the sky from the south.

  "There they come," Frank said. "The fight's started. Up to now the army has been trying to get set, I suppose."

  Nora said, "Is there any way we can hail them? Let them know--"

  Her words were cut off by the horror of what happened. As they watched, the plane skimmed low across the Loop. At a point, approximately over Lake Street, Frank estimated, the planes were annihilated. There was a flash of blue fire coming in like jagged lightning to form four balls of fire around the planes. The fire balls turned, almost instantly, into globes of white smoke that drifted lazily away.