And the more he thought, the more baffled he became. What in hell had gone wrong with the gems, anyway? Solid things like that could not melt, surely, unless… Unless leaving them lying in warm air, close also to his warm body, had done something? After all, they had come from the airless cold of the moon. He remembered his efforts to keep them cold on the journey to Earth.
“You blasted fool!” he said out loud, and more than one passing docker bristled at his truculence. “It must have been the warmth that did it! Like snow in the sun! Gems! Might as well bring home Jovian dirt and try and sell that!”
He scowled and marched on again, uncertain as to what to do. It rather queered his plans for vengeance. Of course, he could spend the time tracking down Masterson, or he could even go back to his ship and determine a new plan of action. But he needed some more Earth in his void-weary bones—plenty more drink and maybe a few women. They were always ready for the space-men.
That new thought momentarily banished the gems from his mind. Carnal pleasures were easier, too, than plotting vengeance. He still had some money. He brightened at the thought and turned his steps in the direction of the nearest liquor house, open in this foul, reeking quarter of the giant city from dawn until midnight. In half an hour, he was in the riotous weed-chewing company of two white-skinned Venusians and a scaly Martian—good guys all of them, and could they park their liquor…!
And while Bull became more and more gloriously drunk through the perpetual sipping of Venusian vermint root extract, the products of his strange gems had disseminated to various parts of the city.
Unseen, inch-high, they moved unnoticed into the offices of some of the city’s highest intellectuals. They invaded the chambers of three famous engineers and sat unseen concentrating upon them. They were present too in the private office of John Masterson, famous scientist—a gaunt, harsh-featured man malignantly crushing anything and everything that showed signs of blocking his path.
They were everywhere—in wall crevices, on picture rails, behind furniture, pursuing some inconceivable plan of their own, all the more potent by reason of its very unexpectedness.
The results were not immediate, but the tiny invaders were untiring. They seemed to possess the capacity for endless hours of profound concentration without the need for rest or food. It was the same with either the men or the women. And despite the smallness of their brains, judged from normal standards, they nonetheless issued a potent hypnotic effect that finally began to have real significance.
The engineers found themselves drawing plans which were quite at variance with normalcy, utterly unaware of the end to which they were working. John Masterson in particular found himself working out a problem in advanced electrical machinery—so profound, so intricate, that he was half frightened at the ease with which he did it. The conviction of unknown powers surged through his brain; he ascribed his new-found genius to an ‘inner force’ Had he raised his cold blue eyes from his notes he would perhaps have seen the ‘inner force’ represented in four pairs of tiny eyes watching him unwaveringly over the top of the great walnut bookcase. But he did not. He went on working deliberately, long after nightfall. His office staff only received curt insults when they reminded him of the time.
None save those few selected ones were aware of anything unusual, and even they were so mentally controlled they did not detect the utter incongruity of the work they were doing. Where normally they would have finished the day’s work and be at home, they were now working steadily, unmindful of food or drink, perpetually puzzled and yet half delighted by the incredible scientific ideas that sprang with easy facility to their brains.
Least of all to be concerned was Bull Cassell. By the time late evening had arrived, he was completely drunk, ready to fight the first man who crossed his path, ready to ray in twain any durned drifter from Mercury to Pluto. Yet deep in his mind was the soaked remembrance of his melted gems; every time they recurred to him, invective rolled freely from his vermint-stained lips.
He did not care what he did or where he went, once he left the saloon. Any alley would do. He moved arm in arm with a Venusian on one side—the second white-skin had got lost somewhere—and a Martian on the other. The three of them bellowed a raucous space shanty at the top of their unlovely voices, the Martian’s high-pitched falsetto blending wincingly with Bull’s basso-profundo.
Then suddenly Bull saw it! He stopped dead and blinked, the bright electric arc high overhead casting his bleared face into a ponderous mass of shadows. But he was not mistaken; his piercingly keen eyes, trained through years to be accustomed to the slightest movements on other worlds, distinctly beheld an inch-high object struggling desperately to free itself from the drainage percolator at the side of the alley, the percolator being a flat metal sheet perforated with tiny holes, self-disinfecting.
Bull whispered an oath. “I’ve got ’em coming on!” he breathed shakily. “Must have! Do you see what I see? That way!” he wound up impatiently, as his Venusian comrade squinted vaguely overhead.
The white-skin failed to see anything—and certainly the Martian didn’t. He was flat on his back, out to the world…
Bull moved forward jerkily and dropped down with a bump that stung his knees. Blankly he stared at the minute thing struggling in the drain. Sudden soberness descended on him.
Thrusting out a blunt finger and thumb, he closed them around the waist of the tiny thing, gave a little jerk and lifted it. Blearily he gazed at it; his intoxication was returning. He could have sworn that the object he was holding was a girl—and passing pretty at that, with fair hair and two tiny spots of blue eyes. She seemed to be dressed in a little silk garment. In the electric arc-light he faintly distinguished her terrified face…
Then, quite convinced that the vermint had been stronger than usual, he put the object gently on the road and headed off wildly into the shadows, unmindful of the Venusian who still gazed vacuously around him.
But the inch-high girl picked herself up, climbed the bordering curb, and also fled at top speed into the squalid darkness.
* * * *
Ceaselessly, week in and week out, while Bull Cassell roamed he cared not where in the city’s cheapest quarters, returning only occasionally to his ship at the space grounds, the little people continued their activities.
Engineers and scientists, gifted with suddenly supernal powers, set about the construction of strange machinery which they themselves did not understand. Nobody in the outside world had any real facts to go upon—but information did leak out three months later that complicated machines had been transferred to the Azores. Why, nobody knew—but determined air pilots scouting the Azores returned with the amazing information that gigantic structures and machines were scattered all over the nine islands and that all forms of normal agricultural life had been obliterated.
That started a veritable fleet of news and television hounds traveling eastward across the ocean, but the airplanes and ships thus employed never got within reasonable distance of the islands before they were blasted to atoms by an unknown form of energy radiated from lofty towers.
Immediately, the old familiar cry of war and invasion flashed across the world, until it became gradually evident that the tenants of the Azores made no attempt to be hostile unless they were directly or indirectly spied upon. Nonetheless, the destruction of American—and some British—boats and airplanes demanded some sort of reprisal. But what? Only fast-moving space-fliers could conceivably defeat those deadly energy rays and both governments were loath to risk such valuable machines when there was no real suggestion of impending war.
Finally, the various authorities went over the earlier photographs and studied in some perplexity the mechanical scenes they presented. From end to end, each of the nine islands was littered with fantastic machinery, together with numerous shed-like buildings and towers of gleaming metal. The study was followed up with an investigation of pro
minent people missing from New York. To their surprise, the police found that seven of the city’s most famous scientists and engineers had last been seen sailing for the Azores in charge of strange equipment locally constructed, and had not been seen since. To be aware of this fact was one thing but to do anything about it was decidedly another…
Then Bull Cassell heard about it. He was sipping vermint as usual in an east side liquor den when the news indirectly reached him through rocket-hand Johnson of the Earth-Mars line.
“It can’t be other-world invasion, anyhow,” Johnson averred reflectively, over the stained table top. “That sort of thing’s done away with—but it might mean that earthly scientists are getting sore at being controlled too long by boards and committees that don’t know what they’re talking about. If there is something starting from the Azores, it means trouble. They’ve got mighty powerful weapons there—things we’ve never ’eard of. Anyhow, the white-livered boneheads in control of our country and England won’t risk space-machines against ’em. That does mean power—mark my words.”
“Huh…” Bull grunted non-committedly.
Johnson drained his glass, went on talking pensively. “There’s some talk about those Azorians dredging off the coast of the southern island. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but maybe it means a lot. You’ve heard about the scientists and engineers missing from the city, of course?”
Bull shook his head. “Nope. Seen no papers or television—heard no radio.”
“I don’t like John Masterson being among the missing,” Johnson muttered depressingly. “He’s too clever by far to be against us. Besides, now he’s gone—”
He broke off, startled. Bull’s glass had suddenly dropped from his fingers to splinter on the table top.
“Masterson!” he shouted fiercely. “Did you say Masterson?”
“Sure, but what—?”
“That’s the guy that framed me ten years ago!” Bull stood breathing hard, veins swelling angrily on his thick neck. He went on talking swiftly, half to himself. “If there’s any menace around those Azores, he’ll be in it, sure as fate. But by Heaven, what a chance to get him! I was trying to figure some way, and now—”
“You’ll never reach the Azores,” Johnson proclaimed drearily. “Look what’s happened to airplanes—and they won’t use spaceships for the same reason.”
“No?” Bull laughed thickly. “We’ll damn well see whether a spaceship can get there or not. It won’t be a lily skin at the controls; it’ll be me— Bull Cassell!”
He spat the eloquence of his assertion, then with a grim nod of farewell, he strode amidst the groups of figures to the outer doors…
CHAPTER III
The Girl from the Jewel
Life felt good again to Bull as he entered his space-machine at the grounds. He had a purpose once more—a motivating vengeance.
Quickly, he closed the air-lock and settled to the controls. The powerful rocket tubes roared and he went off in a streaking line of exhaust into the night sky, curved high atop the huge bulk of Great New York, then sped seaward with ever-mounting velocity. In using his space-machine, he had certain advantages—terrific speed and the opportunity to gain a height denied to ordinary aircraft, excepting the airships of the stratosphere police. Thus it was that he zoomed upward to a ten-mile height before streaking like a silver bullet out across the heaving gray of the Atlantic.
It was impossible to see the Azorest at such a height and in darkness, but his numerous instruments, infallible to a hair’s breadth, told him exactly when he had covered the 2,000-mile stretch. Then he started to dip, exhaust throttled to minimum.
The air whined against the window sockets; he opened his large mouth and let forth a bellowing scream to ease the body tension created by his plummet-like drop—then he flattened the machine out, wiped a trickle of blood from between his lips with the back of his hairy hand. His keen eyes stared through the observation window.
There were lights on the Azores. He could see them distinctly as a haze of twisting dots…and he too had been seen! His vessel became abruptly hot as the edge of a powerful energy beam atop an invisible tower below scraped the bottom plates—then he was zigzagging with brilliant skill through the occasional clouds, moving at such a stupendous pace that he was an impossible target.
As he traveled, he caught glimpses of things he could not understand—of flood-lit machinery working busily on the south island, of immense globes resembling bathyspheres being hauled from the saline depths by cables depending from long-armed cranes. He dared not linger to watch, for fear of destruction. Accordingly, he swung around and shot downwards to the quietest portion of the island, dropped lightly on the shore.
With grim movements, he locked the controls, then patted his flame pistol.
“Now, John Masterson, this is where you get what’s coming to you!” he murmured. “You’ll come back with me to the authorities and give a full explanation for everything, including that frame-up…”
He pulled open the vessel’s airlock and stepped to the exterior. The warm moist air clung like a wet blanket about him. To his right were innumerable metal huts of all shapes and sizes, brightly lit by an illumination that he could swear was cold light—still unfound by the scientists of 2714.
For a moment, he stood frowning, then glanced up at the lofty tower far above him. Evidently, his landing had not been seen. Chuckling to himself, he went slowly forward along the shore line, hiding behind occasional rocks, little by little gaining the vantage point of mechanical operations he had seen from the air.
He gazed in utter bewilderment. His first guess had not been wrong. The globes were bathyspheres, of immensely tough metal; with steady regularity, they descended into the ocean, ascending again within a few minutes. There were other machines, too, resembling gigantic dredging machines, constantly plunging mighty scoops to unguessable depths which arose perpetually amidst boilings of muddy water.
In charge of the operations were four men, none of them recognizable by face, all of them remarkably well built and around middle age. They were attired in curious tight-fitting clothing and moved with a certain efficiency and purpose, controlling the operations of the machinery by a collection of flood-lit switchboards erected on metal pillars imbedded in solid rock.
Bull turned slowly to look around him. As far as he could see, both on this island and the others, there were evidences of industry and super-science beyond his comprehension—almost resembling, in efficiency at least, the highly intelligent work of Martian scientists. But then the Martians were ugly brutes, nor had they any desire or need for Earth conquest. It could not mean that.
“Damned if I—” he began muttering, then he stopped short and clamped his lips shut as something prodded him sharply in the small of his back.
“Keep your hands off your gun and stand up!” The voice was masculine, very clear and distinct.
Muttering under his breath, Bull obeyed, raising his hands—stood staring fiercely in the cold light at a massive man of uncertain age, almost god-like in his blond handsomeness, attired in a tight one-piece garment of dark purple.
“Strangers are not welcome on these islands,” he announced coldly. “Unfortunately, we missed you with the energy disrupters, but the ultimate result will be similar.”
“Yeah?” Bull’s eyes narrowed; his powerful muscles quivered in the desire to act. “Who the blazes are you, anyway? Where are the engineers and scientists that came here? Masterson especially.”
A brief icy smile crossed the man’s face. “In common with the others, he was put to death,” he answered implacably. “We alone are in control here. Once the engineers and scientists finished their hypnotically produced tasks, we exterminated them. A new dynasty has arisen, my friend, to take up the old threads where we dropped them.”
“What old threads? What are you talking about?”
“That is not your concern. You will be impriso
ned pending the pleasure of our leader. Forward!”
Bull hesitated and clenched his upraised fists, but he was wise enough to refrain from action. That complicated gun in his captor’s iron-steady hand was no weapon to trifle with; it was obviously far more deadly than any flame pistol… He turned awkwardly and to the accompaniment of various proddings wound his way in and out between the lighted metal shelters, noting as he passed that they were stored with all manner of amazing machinery.
Some were veritable power houses utilizing the ocean for a continuous source of energy. Just glimpses, but they impressed on Bull’s mind that same conviction of science beyond his understanding.
Then, at a command from his captor, he stepped inside one of the buildings and found himself finally in the gloom of a great cage-like affair. Before he was allowed to turn around, his flame gun was whipped from his belt and the open end of the cage clanged shut.
“You will be studied from a distance by our ruler,” came his captor’s cold voice. “It will then be decided what shall be done with you.”
“I can hardly wait,” Bull growled sourly, and he watched bitterly as the door of the building slammed, leaving him in total darkness.
* * * *
Bull could not be sure how much time passed before his moody reflections inside the cage were finally interrupted. He sprang swiftly from his squatting position on the dusty floor as the shed door quietly opened and shut again. Followed the sound of light footfalls.
“Who’s there?” he demanded sharply, tugging at the cage’s tough bars. “Don’t crawl around there! Show yourself! Give me what’s comin’ to me and get it over with, you lily-bellied—”
“Sssh!” came an impatient injunction, and he noted in astonishment that it was a woman’s tone. “Don’t make such a noise!”
“Who—who are you?” he whispered, straining his eyes—and he descried a dim form moving in the gloom.
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 44
