There was dismissal in the tone and Parke realized it. He went out and Lanning got to his feet slowly, looking down on Peter and the girl from his great height.
“If you want to start something, Lanning, I’m ready,” Peter said grimly. “You didn’t collapse. I knocked you out for the count.”
The ghost of a smile passed over Lanning’s thin lips.
“Yes, I’m quite aware of it. You have all the muscular power for which your age was famed, Excellence.... But you really did far more than just knock me out, you know. You also registered one supreme jolting blow against the Task and the master mind behind it,”
“That doesn’t sound quite like you, Lanning,” Peter said suspiciously. “You were prepared to kill me rather than let me find out any more about the Task.”
“Because of this, my friend!” Lanning raised the metal oval in his hand. “In case you do not know it, this is a product of Anton Shaw’s genius—a dual purpose energized metal, made from an isotope free of all impurity. On the one hand it makes the normal individual will incapable of asserting itself; and on the other it makes the brain hyper-receptive to the will power of another person. For over five years, ever since Anton Shaw operated upon me for an accident—which accident I am sure he himself arranged—I have been under his domination. I have been aware of it too, but so suppressed was I that my normal will could do nothing to alter the circumstance. You, with your magnificent gift for floundering into hallowed places, have restored me to normal. I can never cease to be grateful to you for that.”
Peter grinned and shook the lean hand extended to him.
“Well, that’s a load off my mind, Lanning, believe me! But look here, if you’ve been under domination, how did you ever come to dig me out of that energy-sphere?”
“As far as scientific pursuits are concerned my brain is not deeply affected,” Lanning replied. “It is only in the exercise of normal emotions where I am—or was—balked. I opened the sphere because it was a scientific necessity that it should be done, a fact which Shaw himself had mentioned many a time. Fortunately Shaw cannot see things through my brain when he controls it, so he is I imagine quite in ignorance of your presence....”
“So that’s it,” Peter mused. “Getting back to that metal plate, I can credit your explanation about it. In my day surgeons used to remove the brain-hemispheres of frogs and pigeons and reduce them to automata. They performed complex movements in response to external will, but otherwise were altogether devoid of activity. Your case, on a much advanced scale, must have been somewhat similar.”
“It was, yes.” Lanning clenched his fists. “But now that is past and our task is to fight Anton Shaw science for science! You see, about the time I met with my accident, Shaw knew that it would not be long before he was exposed as a criminal. Being aware of what was coming, he evidently prepared in advance, and, having me at his mercy on the operating table, fixed this plate in my brain. For some unexplained reason he made no effort to control me when it came to my part in exposing him. The only effect on me at the time was to dull my normal emotions. But a little while after Shaw had been fired into space, I began to realize I was receiving thoughts other than my own. They came about every four weeks, their stimuli so strong I could not break free of them before the four weeks had passed.”
“At every full moon?” Peter suggested, and Lanning gave him a quick look.
“Yes. Of course, you discovered that much for yourself, did you not? There is, I’m sure, some power on the Moon of which Shaw avails himself, by which he can transmit hypnotism—and I, of all people in the world, became the most susceptible. I received plans for the transmitter-receiver; I made Swanson manufacture them. I was so utterly under the sway of hypnotic and post-hypnotic orders that the only thing that mattered to me was to protect the cause and destroy all who questioned it. Shaw had imbedded that command deep in my brain. That’s why I had Swanson killed, why I would have killed you too but for your quickness.”
“And Barnet, the sculptor?” Alza questioned. “Apparently he got the idea for designing the first Temple without any help at all.”
“Barnet and Anton Shaw were great friends,” Lanning replied. “As you have seen for yourself, Barnet is a man with a highly sensitive brain. It is possible that he reacts to hypnosis without material aids. If he were called by name—as us usual in an hypnotic subject—I think he would respond. At least that is the only way I can explain it at the moment. As you theorized, Excellence, brains today are supersensitive.... However, what really concerns us is this appalling Task that is hoodwinking all the people of the world. The Task which I started insofar that I sent out the original order for people to attend the Temples. At least the Governing Councils of both Federations sent it out on my instructions.”
“I know world-hypnosis is at the basis of everything,” Peter said, “but what is the Task?”
“All over the world channels are being dug,” Lanning replied slowly. “You said you were going to see what is being put into the channels. Well, I can save you the trouble. The channels are being packed from end to end with atomic force explosive—energized copper dust, if you prefer. It is safe enough to put it into the channels, but to take it out is impossible—one slight movement can cause instant disintegration. When the job is finished, every channel will begin and end at the Grand Tower.”
“Then?” Peter felt his scalp starting to crawl.
“That hemispherical bowl at the Tower top will be filled with moondust, which as you know is photogenic to moonlight. You may know that selenium, the opposite number to moondust, is stimulated by the normal action of light into ejecting its electrons from its atoms, producing electrical conductivity and consequent energy. Well, moondust does the same thing, but it is so low in the scale of reactions that it only operates under the stimulant of moonlight—and full or nearly full moonlight at that.”
“Or any light equivalent to that strength?” Alza asked.
“That alone,” Lanning emphasized, “I have made sure of it. There must be some quality about lunar ray at or near full moon that has a unique reaction upon moondust, just as there seems to be a quality in them, which can produce hypnosis.... But you can see what will happen. When moonlight falls upon the dust in the bowl the substance will transmit its expelled energy down the feeder cables and apparatus and act as a flashpoint to the explosive-packed channels—”
“But the world will blow to bits!” Peter gasped.
“That,” Lanning said bitterly, “is Anton Shaw’s hope! You mentioned a scheme of revenge, Excellence, and how right you are! Expelled from Earth, Shaw still lives—how we do not know—and he is using the Moon, his home of exile, to destroy Earth and everything upon it.”
Peter gave a little shiver. “I can just guess what’ll happen, too. Even a century before my day they’d found atomic force—blew Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the Japanese map with it. With six channels packed full of the stuff—!”
“And ten thousand times more powerful than the atomic force of your day,” Lanning added. .
There was silence. Lanning stood frowning and looked at the plate in his hand, then he tossed it irritably to the table. Peter sank his hands in his pockets and scowled at the floor. Finally Alza put a thought into words.
“Mr. Lanning, if there are a myriad deadly radiations in space, how did Anton Shaw ever get to the Moon? I just don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I, Miss Holmes—but there is that level of radiation because the instruments show it, as I shall demonstrate to you later on. That is not important. Our job is to defeat this scheme of Shaw’s—and that is not going to be so easy!”
“Why not?” Peter asked. “You or I have only to issue orders for the Task to cease forthwith and the people will obey.”
“No, Excellence,” Lanning said, shaking his head. “The Task is imbedded in the mind of almost everybody in the world. The exceptions are among the intelligentsia, imbedded as deeply as my own devotion to it. I knew the dange
r and still went on. The people do not even know what they are doing. But the years of hypnosis, every month, has so fixed their brains on the Task that they will only stop working at it through one cause—the failure to receive any further monthly orders and therefore the consequent chance to reassert their own personalities and to reason things out. That can only happen if Ijax, the temples, and the man responsible for both is destroyed. You or I might as well tell the sun to stop shining for all we would accomplish among the people.”
“Is there anything to stop us destroying the Ijaxes and Temples throughout the world?” Alza demanded urgently.
“We might destroy half a dozen,” Lanning sighed, “then by that time people would have seized us and probably torn us limb from limb. Certainly we should be condemned to death....”
“For when is this world-explosion timed?” Peter asked grimly.
“August Twenty-Ninth, the next full moon. In fact, probably a couple nights before that. By that time every channel will be filled with atomic explosive and the bowl will be filled with moondust....”
“There are two ways to stop it without appealing to the people, I think,” Peter said. “One is secretly to confiscate all moondust, wherever it may be; and the other—if the that fails—is to cut the cables on the Tower and so stop the moon reacting, or at any rate transmitting its power to the channel.”
Lanning smiled faintly. “Those cables are encased in conduits, Excellence, and the conduits are made of a metal whose atoms interlock. No power on earth can break that metal. I knew it when I had the conduits made, but I was powerless to do anything. The grip of two flat surfaces in perfect cohesion is an approximate idea of the composition of that metal.... No, that will not do. As for the terminal points where the cables join the bowl, they are encased in cowlings of similar metal. As for moving the moondust—that would be too difficult and long a task; there are thousands of tons of it. We should court disaster every moment.”
“Then what about emptying the channels of explosive?” Peter pleaded. “There must be some way!”
“Again, too dangerous,” Lanning sighed. “As I said before, packing the channels is not difficult, but withdrawing the explosive is next to impossible. It is packed in such a way that it does not explode. In withdrawing it slips and movement would be bound to occur, with fatal consequences.”
“Talk about having everything tied up!” Peter whistled. “I just don’t know what to suggest then.”
“I have one notion which might work,” Lanning said slowly. “That is to have a cover built, of the identical size of the Tower top. We will find a way to place it over the moondust so that the Moon cannot affect it. And the cover must be metal. I have found that the peculiar radiation that affects moondust passes through everything non-metallic. We cannot use the cover idea indefinitely, of course, but it might give us a chance to gain time.”
“I suppose,” Alza said, “we couldn’t have an accident to the climatic machines and so produce cloud cover?”
“No,” Lanning told her. “Did I not say that only metal serves to block the lunar radiations? I am thinking too that when Shaw sees the Task is not finished as he had intended he will talk, or at any rate communicate, with the people and that will automatically make things uncomfortable for us.”
“Certainly a cover’s the only solution,” Peter decided. “I suppose you’ll be able to fix it up, Lanning? Of course, the real cure lies in uprooting Shaw and blocking whatever it is the Moon’s got, but that’s impossible when we can’t cross space.”
“The cover is our main concern at the moment,” Lanning replied. “I will draw designs and have one made to the exact dimensions. It is unlikely that the engineers will suspect its purpose....”
CHAPTER TEN
SUSPICION
It was mid-evening when Mark Lanning returned with the announcement that he had put the work in hand for a metal cover for the Tower, and as he had anticipated no one had even questioned the nature of the order, evidently under the impression that it was something to do with the Task.
“But if anyone finds out its real purpose, we shall be in serious trouble,” Lanning confided. “My proposal is to have it delivered to my private laboratory, then as soon as the moondust has been put in the bowl, we will put the cover in place with the aid of a breakdown-helicopter—that is a machine equipped with winch and magnetic grapples,” he explained, seeing Peter’s look. “I shall then do everything in my power to keep anyone from examining the top of the Tower until two nights after the full moon.... From my experiments with moondust, it appears that the moonlight affects it for two nights before and two nights after full moon. After that, although the diminution of actual moonlight is not very noticeable, the mysterious effect produced on moondust is—which proves that this remarkable property of Luna is only at its peak immediately before, during, and immediately after the full phase....”
“Well, we’ll hope for the best,” Peter said, shrugging. “But I still think the surest way is to eliminate Anton Shaw himself somehow. Look here, Lanning, you are an expert scientist. Can’t you think of a way to proof a spacecraft against these deadly radiations?”
“I doubt it,” Lanning mused. Then: “Suppose you come along to the laboratory and see what we are up against?”
Peter and the girl both nodded promptly and settled themselves in the care of the helicopter-robot, Lanning doing likewise in the arms of a third automaton.
They were taken out over the lighted city and downwards to the Research Building where that morning Peter had had his interview with Swanson.
“If my manner should seem to revert to its former stiffness, it is because I wish nobody to know I am changed,” Lanning said, as they entered the building’s entrance hall. “Now, come with me.”
From the hall he led the way down a long corridor to a door at the end. It opened into an enormous electrical laboratory brilliantly lighted with the customary cold-light globes. It seemed to Peter that every conceivable type of electrical apparatus was here—some of it in action and being supervised by men and women technicians, the rest of it quiescent and only half constructed.
“This is the brain-room of Metropolita,” Lanning murmured. “In here all the electrical research is performed—useless research unhappily if the Task should succeed in its purpose. Off this room lie the atomic power halls, the machines for the climate control, radio guidance for aircraft and communication with distant parts of the world...and so on. Now here is what I want you to see.”
He walked over to a deserted part of the laboratory and stopped before a tall instrument resembling an ultra modem radio-receiver. The controls were incomprehensible to Peter, and to judge from the expression on her face to Alza also. So far as both of them could tell, it was the shining screen in the centre of the instrument that was the most dominant feature.
“This is a special oscillograph,” Lanning said, switching on the power. “You will know of course, Excellence, that an old-fashioned oscillograph gives visual representation of the oscillation of an electric current. On the same principle this one reveals the radiations existing in space out beyond the Heaviside Layer. The radiation crosses a radio-beam from the instrument—which came into operation when I switched on the motor—and the result is...that!”
Another switch moved and the lightning-like line of a radiation appeared in zigzag formation across the screen. After a moment’s study of a slave-instrument a frown came on Lanning’s forehead.
“That is odd! That is cosmic ray and solar radiation—the detector shows it by the wavelengths. But the cosmic rays are at ordinary concentration. Then that means.... I cannot understand it!” Lanning muttered. “On the last three occasions when I tried that instrument, there was massive cosmic ray radiation and a myriad other radiations, such as gamma—even more dangerous.”
Peter and Alza watched the screen intently for a few moments, but that dominant cosmic ray remained the main thing visible. As a background to it came the familiar but fainte
r myriad lines of known radiations—ultraviolet, infrared, heat, and other charted emanations of space and the sun. But of other more dangerous radiations no sign appeared.
“From this,” Peter said at length, “it looks to me as though space is exactly as it was in my day, when we were able to travel in space without undue problems.”
“But on numberless occasions, Excellence, I—” Lanning paused and a startled expression came to his face. “Now I come to think of it, I have never tried this instrument since Anton Shaw was exiled: maybe it was his hypnotism which held me from doing so! While he was here, and I was a scientist under him, he used to handle this instrument, and it was he who showed me the increased radiations and proclaimed—quite naturally, as it seemed to me then—that all astronauts and scientists manning our satellites and lunar research base should be recalled, and no further attempts made to travel in space.”
“You mentioned that lunar base before,” Peter said grimly. “Seems pretty obvious now that Anton Shaw has taken it over and is using it as his base of operations.”
“And in order to get it to himself, he faked unclassifiable and devastating radiations in the oscillograph!” Lanning snapped. “Handling it himself, he could easily do that, and he would know no scientist other than me would ever touch that instrument, so he kept me away from it once he had departed. Yes, that must be the solution, and the answer to how he survived in space.”
“It seems more evident than ever now, Mr. Lanning, that he planned everything in advance,” Alza remarked. “He wanted his death to be thought inevitable when he was fired into space, and so started the story in advance that space kills.”
“Correct,” Lanning agreed. “Now we know that space is open—free for space travel to be resumed. That means....”
“That we can get to the Moon from where Shaw is operating,” Peter said, clenching his fists and his eyes brightening. “I say that we ought to go there, find out what he’s up to, and put a stop to it!”
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