Vera could only stare in dazed horror. The words she uttered were scarcely audible.
“You mean poison the atmosphere of the whole world?”
“The whole world will take a long time,” Lance said, brooding. “I propose to wipe out city after city. First, this great metropolis—then unless the atmosphere has drifted to other cities, I shall attack them as well. Little by little I’ll destroy them all—wipe out humanity entirely.”
“But it’s fantastic—impossible!”
“Not at all. I have the apparatus and I know the wavelength. The rest is merely continuing the duty the Martian assigned to me.”
“You can’t do it, Lance!” The girl seized his arms in sudden desperation. “Lance—you can’t do it! You’ve gone mad, or are hypnotized, or something… Besides, even supposing you tried to get away with this, don’t forget that humanity will wear gasmasks for pro-tection. They’ll go underground…” she wound up desperately.
“Gasmasks were ruled out with the Peace Pact of ten years ago,” he answered grimly. “Humanity will fly underground, I agree—but in time the gas will reach them. In five years not a thing will be alive on the planet, except you and I. Then we’ll talk further. We have masks,” he finished quietly, nodding to them as they lay on the floor. “They’re laboratory masks, and quite effective.”
Vera stared at them, frowned momentarily. “But there are three masks there—not two—”
“I believe in being prepared…”
CHAPTER III
Vera Makes a Discovery
Lance turned suddenly, and motioned the girl across the cellar.
“Better eat something,” he said briefly, picking up a tin of corned beef from the supplies he had brought along. “I’ll bring some more tinned stuff later. This will do for now…”
Vera took the tin from him, began to twist the key in her slim fingers. The strip of tin snapped off. Impatiently she swung on Lance as he stood surveying his machinery in the torchlight.
“Here—you open it,” she said brusquely. “You’ve a can opener on that pocket knife of yours…”
He felt in his pockets and shrugged.
“Guess I’ve left it behind…”
“What! Your lucky mascot, and on an occasion like this!” Vera stared at him incredulously. He failed to return her look, took the tin, then picked up a short, blunt bar of steel from his equipment and rammed it into the gap—rather too vigorously, for he misapplied the pressure and slashed his palm along the jagged tin edge. Vera winced in sympathy with him, knew instinctively that that cut had gone to the bone. Almost automatically she tugged out her handkerchief…then it dropped from her fingers as Lance merely shook his hand a little and went on pulling. At last he had the tin open, threw away the lid.
“Didn’t—didn’t you cut yourself?” Vera stammered, dumbfounded.
He shook his head slowly as he handed the tin to her. She saw quite clearly his hand was not even marked.
She took the tin absently, was hardly aware how she started to eat. She had a remembrance of raking out the stuff from the tin and of drinking some unpleasantly fizzy pop—but it was not her physical reactions that were concerning her. She was thinking—hard, fitting together certain little odd incidents and remembering half-forgotten facts.
The three gasmasks, the missing penknife, and now a hand that should have been cut, and was not. And the memory of that all-powerful hypnotism: the even remoter memory of something about cellulose…
Say, any objections if I walk around?” she asked suddenly.
“None at all—but don’t try and escape.” Lance was too busy with his machinery to take much notice of her.
She turned and strolled casually enough along the length of the cellar, going further and further into the deeper shadows at the remote end. Once or twice she glanced back to behold Lance still busy with his apparatus. Then suddenly she stopped, her heart beating faster. The cellar was not complete in itself. At its remoter end was a massive, ancient door, obviously leading to yet another underground place beyond. The girl regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, then stared at the dust ridden floor. She stooped, stared fixedly at two long troughs gouged into the film, troughs such as heels might make if a body were dragged! And they vanished right at that door.
The sack Lance had carried from the laboratory which the janitor had seen…? Vera’s eyes narrowed in thought. She tried the door; it was locked. Just in time she turned back to Lance as he stood regarding her suspiciously.
“Satisfied?” he demanded bluntly, as she came up to him.
She nodded slowly, glanced at the short metal bar he had used to open the tin. Then she stood in silence until the interest of his machinery got him again. Slowly, without distracting his attention, she picked the bar up. It was comfortably heavy in her hand…
It took all her courage to perform the next action. With every ounce of her strength she whirled the bar through the air directly on the back of the head in front of her. Lance dropped instantly, to the floor.
In a moment the girl was down on her knees, searched through his pockets and pulled out every key she could find, then holding out the one that obviously fitted the cellar door she raced towards it, torch in her free hand.
The lock turned under the key. She saw as she swung the door wide that it was of tremendous thickness—clearly explained why no sounds, if her guess was right, had penetrated through.
A figure against the far wall turned slowly as she flashed her torch before her—a figure only half dressed and shackled to the wall by chain and waist manacle, even as she had been.
“Lance!” she screamed. “Lance! It is you! I was right…”
Instantly she flung herself forward, searched through the keys until she found the right one to the manacle. Lance tore it aside, flung the tumbled hair from before his eyes.
“What—what on earth are you doing here?” he demanded. “Did that devil capture you as well, then?”
“I walked into it,” she answered quickly. “But tell me, how are you? O. K.?”
“Considering everything, yes—but how’d you find me?
“A hunch, I guess—in fact several hunches. Finally I was convinced that that thing in there wasn’t you—but a perfect imitation. It’s the Martian, isn’t it, and it carried you from the laboratory in a sack?”
Lance nodded grimly. “When it reached maturity it smashed open its case and attacked me. I tore out my knife to save myself but I wasn’t quick enough. It hypnotized me, drained my mind of every thought, learned the language—everything. I was shown its whole scheme of vengeance. It told me it would preserve my life because it had more to learn from me. Then, completely under hypnotic control, I was forced to provide the thing with clothes. I went home and got them for it. Then it took me away in a sack, and I couldn’t raise a finger to help myself. Some kind of instinct led the thing to this out of the way spot. I got chained up and—” Lance broke off, shrugged. “That’s all there is to it.”
“For my part,” Vera said, “I remembered you saying the thing was pure cellulose. I also remember from my science school days that cellulose can do almost anything from imitating any known object to adapting itself to any known condition. I was finally convinced the thing was cellulose when it cut itself and almost instantly healed itself by adaption to the circumstance. Somehow, I realized, the thing had imitated you—”
“Exactly,” Lance broke in quickly. “It has Martian intelligence of terrific power: it patterned itself after the nearest living object because of its earthly fertilization. I was the object… But—but how did you escape from it?” he demanded in amazement.
“I hit it on the head so hard and so suddenly it hadn’t the chance to adapt itself. It’s planning world destruction and—”
“I know,” Lance broke in seriously. “We’ve got to…”
He broke off suddenly and gripped the girl’s arm. The Martian was standing in th
e doorway, set faced, eyes glittering.
“Run!” Lance commanded suddenly. “We can’t fight this thing. Follow me!”
Simultaneously with the words he hurled the torch straight at the creature: it took it off guard, sent it reeling to one side. In that split second Lance and the girl were through the doorway, stumbled across the black cellar and up the steps to the stone trap. Behind them the Martian’s footsteps were pursuing.
Desperately Lance pushed up the stone, flung it to one side, then dragged Vera up behind him—almost hurled her to the open window giving egress to the wharf outside. She got through, but not so Lance. A terrific pain stabbed through his skull as the tremendous hypnotic power of the Martian smote on his nerve centers. He reeled dizzily, came up hard with his back against bellying masses wrapped in straw.
Dimly a thought revolved in his mind. No ordinary weapons would kill this infinitely assimilative creature— But acid? Acid and cellulose…? With a last desperate effort he hurled over the bottle nearest to him and forced himself back.
Fuming, spurting smoke rose on the air, thick with acrid fumes. At that same moment the Martian came forward. He slipped in the sizzling liquid on the concrete, fell face down into it…
Sickened and half blinded Lance staggered round the dry portion to the window, scream after scream ringing in his ears as the deadly stuff decomposed the cellulose hybrid far faster than its assimilative powers could build themselves up to the sudden change.
Somehow, Lance realized he got through the window, stood sucking in great lungfuls of air. The girl’s arm was on his shoulders. Things were quieter now: the screaming had ceased.
“Naturally, cellulose dissolves almost instantaneously in nitric acid,” Lance muttered, when he got his breath back. He stared into the dark space through the window. “Whoever forgot those acid jars didn’t realize they’d saved the world,” he went on slowly. “And you, dearest… Beyond question the Martian only spared your life with ideas of later mate-hood. He meant to save me too to drain my mind of all earthly knowledge. Hence the three gasmasks and—”
“Forget it,” the girl whispered. “It’s over. The car’s round the corner. Drive home and I’ll slip in and get you an overcoat. Then we can come back and throw that machinery into the harbor or somewhere…”
THE OTHERS
“One moment I was in my father’s laboratory, and then I was here.”
The inter-phone buzzed insistently for the fifth time in an hour. Douglas Milton, resident surgeon of the Karoneth Hospital for Nervous Diseases, reached out a claw of a hand and snapped the switch.
“Well?” His voice was brusque; his dark eyes tired. He had been so overworked recently he felt as though he could do with a course of treatment himself.
“Have you a moment, Douglas?” It was the voice of Dr. Meadows in the loudspeaker, and Meadows was one of the specialists in neuronic ganglia.
“No,” Milton answered briefly. “Not even for you, Harry. I’m up to the eyes in this case of Joseph Baxter. I think that he’s—”
“Joseph Baxter has nothing on this, Douglas! It’s the most amazing thing that ever happened. A woman totally different from all the women I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh!” Milton neither looked nor sounded impressed. “What’s so unique about her?”
Well, her blue hair for one thing.”
“That isn’t unique. Women will do anything these days.”
“But it isn’t dyed! She has genuine blue hair—and there is something odd about her eyes too. Just as though she’s wearing contact lenses. She isn’t, though. Frankly I’m out of my depth. All my specialised knowledge doesn’t apply.”
Milton reflected, his interest becoming slowly aroused. After a moment he asked a question: “Where does she hail from?”
“No idea. She doesn’t talk English. A passer-by found her fainting in the gutter and sent for an ambulance. General Hospital couldn’t make head nor tail of the business and decided she might be a nervous sufferer, so sent her here. I think you should have a look—as resident surgeon.”
“All right,” Milton sighed. “I’ll come.”
“Ward Four. You’ll find me there.”
Milton switched off, surveyed the notes upon which he had been immersed, then murmuring things about women in general and this blue-haired one in particular, he left his sanctum, to arrive a few moments later in the spacious cleanliness of Ward Four. Here and there a patient acknowledged his tall, spare frame as he strode actively down the main aisle-way between the beds. His response to the acknowledgments was brief—as usual. He knew his job but his bedside manner had never been very remarkable.
Observing Harry Meadows’ white-coated figure standing beside a distant bed, Milton headed in that direction. Meadows was a rotund, genial, extremely thorough man and it more than surprised Milton to know that he was, for once, at a loss.
Meadows did not speak as Milton reached him. He merely pointed to the young woman lying motionless in the bed. Milton eyed her fixedly, unable to avoid staring at that mass of blue hair; then he lifted the graph at the bed-end and studied it.
“Nervous exhaustion; partial blindness,” he murmured, half aloud, then slurred the professional references into a jumbled undertone. “Mmmm—Unique enough, Harry.”
“No doubt of it!”
Moving forward, Milton leaned over the young woman, studying her. He was not given to emotion; it rarely found expression on his cold, sardonic face—but this time there was certainly a light of profound amazement in his eyes as he scrutinised the extraordinary sky-blueness of that bushy hair, startlingly contrasted by the white pillow.
The girl’s eyebrows and long lashes were the same shade. The face in itself was heart-shaped with a sensitive mouth and well-bred nose. Unusual too was her skin—the colour of dull bronze, as though she had been exposed continuously to ultra-violet or else intense sunlight.
“Very peculiar,” Milton confessed, puzzled; then he stood erect as the girl seemed suddenly to become aware of his presence and opened her eyes. Now here was a shock, and it sent all Milton’s medical knowledge into jeopardy—for here was the unexplained. The girl’s eyes were not those of a normal human being.
In colour they were aluminium-grey, surprisingly beautiful somehow and yet utterly devoid of pupils! The effect was of huge, diamond-bright irises, reflecting multicolours from infinitesimal points, just as if they were prismatic or else made up of finely powdered diamond-dust.
“I told you her eyes were peculiar,” Meadows remarked, as Milton stood like an eagle and gazed fixedly. “I don’t think she can see very well. At first I thought she had some queer form of cataract, but now I— Well, I don’t know what to think!”
“No; I shouldn’t think you do! She’s without parallel in medical history— What about the rest of her? How does she check up on female anatomy?”
“Normal, except for the bronze skin. I think it may be that shade because of her low ebb of health. Her height is five feet four and her weight seven stone six. Her language is foreign, as I told you.”
“What country?”
“None I can place and I have knowledge of twelve languages.”
Milton frowned, then looked back at the girl and spoke in his peremptory voice.
“What is your name, young woman? Where have you come from?”
Her response, though weak, was extremely quick—so much so it seemed hardly possible that her tongue could form the words so rapidly. Her strangely beautiful face changed in expression with sensitive quickness as she talked, passing through all the stages from complete bewilderment to hopeless despair. Milton kept thinking all the time that her speech sounded exactly like spoken shorthand.
“I don’t understand you,” he said at length; and then he tried vainly to look professionally unconcerned as he turned to Meadows. “She’d better be removed to a private room until she is completely recovered. I’ll make her my own special charge. Ask Sister to step over
here, will you?”
Meadows nodded and raised a ringer to the night-Sister two beds distant…
* * * *
With care and attention the blue-haired girl returned gradually to normal health. After several weeks she was able to be left almost to her own devices in the quiet, sunny room which had been assigned to her. Her only companion was the poker-faced Nurse Dixon, who privately regarded her as a painted hussy.
This viewpoint was probably born of jealousy, however, for in returning to health the beauty of the unknown girl became something to wonder at. The dull copper of her skin changed to a satiny yellow. This, coupled with her perfect features and well brushed hair—to say nothing of the strange eyes—lent an effect which was breath-taking.
For hours at a time she would try to convey some kind of message, moving her expressive hands quickly, her wide, intelligent forehead wrinkling in despair as Nurse Dixon only shook her white-capped head and stared with level blue eyes.
This went on until Milton, by now at his wits’ end to know what to do with his queer charge, hit upon the idea of taking her to his friend Hugh Nelson, scientist and mathematician. The razor-brained Nelson might be able to throw some light on the situation since most of his life was spent in dabbling in scientific matters off the beaten track. Since money was no object with him he could spend his time doing exactly as he liked.
So one morning the girl found herself led into the untidy laboratory at the rear of Nelson’s London home, Douglas Milton towering up beside her. Whether she could see or not was still a moot point, but she certainly appeared to be watching the figure of a young man in shirtsleeves as he slid from before a paper-littered desk and came quickly forward.
As he beheld the blue-haired girl he stopped abruptly, then with an effort at composure he glanced towards Dr. Milton. The girl watched him with her extraordinary eyes.
“Mr. Nelson will be with you in a minute. Doctor… Have a chair…”
The John Russell Fearn Science Fiction Megapack Page 56
