From behind her tinted goggles, Lalia watched the mounting violence of that interchange of titanic energies. Even through her thick suit she felt the wafts of disturbed, heated air that eddied about her. But her timid fears were gone now. The deliberate efficiency with which Melvin operated the switchboard, as though to demonstrate to her his absolute mastery over the machine, reassured her completely, leaving her in rapt admiration of his superb confidence.
“Now!” he cried, and closed the big plunger switch connected with the distributor plant, into which the sizzling bolts of electric power had been hurling their terrific voltages. In a few seconds more the lavender beam came dimly into view, ascending to the concrete roof, and gradually deepening in colour and solidity. Enthralled, Lalia stood staring at it while Melvin waited, keeping careful watch on his meters. Eventually he looked up, and brought her out of her trance with a gesture towards the televisor behind her.
Lifting her goggles, she turned to look at the screen, to find the view strangely dimmed. Fifteen minutes before, it had been bright and sunny outside. Now it was dull and gloomy, the landscape barely discernible, overhung by thick black clouds. She turned the view control slowly, and the all-seeing eye traversed the surrounding vistas. Everywhere, in and outside the city, it was the same. Not a single ray of evening sun penetrated those darkly ominous masses of thundercloud floating above.
Again she felt that brooding fear, and turned to find Melvin gazing over her shoulder at the screen, his helmet pushed back over his head, eyes half-closed in a leer of smug satisfaction. Behind him that stabbing beam of lavender light was steady, unwavering.
“The—the storm!” she said uncertainly.
He nodded slowly, confidently. “It won’t break yet,” he assured her. “Meanwhile, perhaps I can satisfy your curiosity as to how this machine works. You know that the Sun is constantly throwing off streams of electrons, which enter the Earth’s atmosphere and, under certain conditions, bring about electric storms. When an area of the atmosphere becomes impregnated with them, a positive electric field is built up, which finally discharges to earth.
“In just the same way, I can produce such storms with this machine by capturing and storing up those streams of electrons from the Sun and releasing them at will. This store of potential energy is the source of the vast power I use, of which I told you. When I have a potential of twenty billion solar volts, the energy is released from the storage globes and passed into the converters, thence to the distributor plant. It manifests itself in that violet beam and passes through to the outside just as easily as radio waves pass through solid substance. It reaches into the atmosphere, and there forms an intense positive field extending over a large area. Hence the dense thunderclouds produced by the change in atmospheric conditions. Eventually the charge breaks down, and we get our storm.”
Lalia’s doubts were not relieved by the knowledge of the machine’s functioning. In fact, she was all the more certain that its purpose was merely to destroy.
“And what about the other conditions?” she ventured. “Or are you only interested in storms?”
He permitted himself a smile that was almost genuine. “At the moment, yes.” Then his face hardened, his grey eyes grew cold, and his gloved hands clenched in grim determination. “I am going to produce a storm of such violence as has never been known in all history—a storm that will lay London, and all around it for a hundred miles, in the dust!”
Lalia’s gnawing anxieties crystallised at last into a chilling panic which stopped her breath and clutched agonisingly at her heart. For an eternity she could only stand there staring, sick with horror, while she strove to find words with which to reply once she had recovered her power of speech.
“You—you don’t mean—” Her tongue was still incapable of conveying her chaotic thoughts. Her lips trembled in sympathy with her shaking fingers. Melvin watched her stonily. There was deadly venom in his voice as he went on relentlessly.
“I mean that I am going to take my revenge on this proud city before I take its destinies into my hands. It needs a lesson—badly. When first I tried to gain a foothold in it, it despised me because of my lowly origin. I knew the ultimate power I sought, the Mastership of the city, would never be mine through ability alone. All through the years I have been constantly reminded that I was not born into the Intellectual Circle. So, to overcome that handicap, I produced this.”
He waved a gloved hand towards the machine. There was a wild exultancy in his manner now, and his voice rose to a higher pitch. To Lalia, as she stood there transfixed, it sounded almost a shriek
“A destroyer—that’s what it is, a destroyer of prejudices. And yet a creator—the builder of a new order of things. When I am Master, the city will see many changes. There will be plenty for us to do, Lalia!”
“You—you seem very sure—that you will be Master.” The girl found the words a terrible effort. “If you’re—found out—”
He laughed, hideously. “Oh, I’ve taken care of that! Rufus Latimer is in his office tonight—on the top floor of the highest building in the city. This storm will have no respect for tall buildings or for men of high office. It will be ruthless, devastating! In another ten minutes—”
Suddenly, to Lalia, this man she had cared for and encouraged stood revealed as a dangerous fiend armed with a dreadful weapon; a warped genius, drunk with ambition, who would stop at nothing to achieve his selfish ends. The realization brought her back to her senses, filled her with bitter anger that flowed through her veins in a flood of furious energy. Seized by a desperate impulse, she wheeled, snatched up a light steel chair, and flung it with all her strength at the posturing figure of Melvin.
He sensed her intention, but too late to do more than jerk his head aside. One of the tubular legs of the chair caught him full in the face, striking his forehead before it crashed to the floor. He raised a hand to his eyes, gave a little moan, swayed and crumpled up over the switchboard.
Lalia did not wait to see the result of her sudden burst of violence.
She was obsessed by one thought—to escape from this crackling, stinking, blinding machine and the madman who had created it. As soon as she had flung the chair she turned to the door, pulled back the heavy bolts, swung it open and fled down the passage towards the steps which led up into the rear of the house. There she stopped only long enough to throw off her protective suit and snatch up her hat and coat. Then she ran to the front door and out into the roadway to her car parked on the side.
Gasping for breath, heart thumping wildly, she scrambled into it and drove off, snapping on the headlights as she pressed her foot hard on the accelerator. Though it was still early evening, the darkness was now almost as black as night itself; the rows of houses on either side were dotted lines of light, the road a shining ribbon of floodlit plastic stretching out ahead of her. The still air was warm and clammy; she was grateful for the gentle draught, which came through the lowered windows as the car gathered speed. A deathly silence, broken only by the soft purr of the wheels on the roadway, seemed to overhang the darkened world as though with a threat.
Now that she had escaped, she scarcely knew what to do or even where to go. She began to wonder if she should not go back to turn off the machine before it could do the damage Melvin intended. But she had not injured him seriously; he had probably recovered by now and would certainly prevent her interfering with his plans. In any case, the storm would break in a few minutes if what he had said was true. There was nothing she could do except try to save herself in the short time that remained.
If she tried to warn the people, who would heed her? And what could they do but await the storm they were already anticipating, without any suspicion of its unnatural origin, its catastrophic menace? Except, perhaps, Rufus Latimer. But by the time she reached the heart of London— She could only clutch at the hope that Melvin was exaggerating the potential violence of the storm. And yet....
Levison Read! The thought came to her as she realised
that she was approaching a junction where the road to Paradise Acres led off on her left. She would go to him—he would understand. She would tell him the whole story of his brother’s treachery, of her own foolish encouragement of his crazy lust for power. And if she could only get there in time, she might be able to warn him, to save him from the storm.
She drove madly until she reached the crossroads, turned and urged the car on at full speed. The road was clear, stretching out in a straight line of light towards the open country beyond the city’s limits. The miles vanished beneath her racing wheels, until at last she topped the rise overlooking the little collection of bungalows lying in a green hollow. Then, abruptly, the storm broke.
A brilliant flash of lightning snaked across the black sky, piercing the gloom with a blinding intensity. Almost immediately a shattering crash of thunder shook the earth beneath with its terrific concussion. Dazzled, Lalia clung to the steering wheel as the car dropped swiftly down the slope. The lightning came again, stabbing down from two directions in a shower of purple strands upon the road ahead. Even as she recoiled from the impact of the flash, the thunder beat at her eardrums, making her wince with pain; nor had she recovered from the shock of it before the road directly in front of her was again drenched with violet flame and the thunder rolled over her with mounting fury.
Another vivid flash forced her to lower her eyes from the windscreen for a fleeting instant. She raised them just in time to see a giant elm tree at one side of the road, fifty yards ahead, split itself in half and come toppling down across her path. She jammed on the brakes, came to a stop within two yards of its spreading branches which completely blocked the roadway. She clambered out of the car and stumbled forward through a lilac-tinted haze, reached the fallen tree as another blinding flash high above her was followed by a swishing roar as of a deadly projectile descending from the tortured skies. Startled, she looked up to see a ball of blazing brilliance fall into a distant meadow.
In the steady glare of the headlights and the ceaseless lightning that dimmed them to pallid beams of yellow, she clawed her way between the branches of the fallen tree. While the thunder crashed on either side in a constant cannonade, she paused uncertain on the road beyond, peering into the intermittent gloom. Down there in the valley, dimly visible between the purple flashes, she could pick out the lights of houses in Paradise Acres. She still had the best part of a mile to go before she reached Levison Read’s bungalow. A mile of terror, with lightning-swift death striking down at her every second.
She hesitated only a moment before she made up her mind. With sudden resolve, she made for the grass bank at the roadside, crawled between the wires of the fence, and started to walk across the field in the direction of the huddling houses. She had hardly taken half a dozen paces when the rain came, falling in huge drops which soon became a solid downpour, drenching her until her light overcoat was soaked, striking at her face and leaving her gasping, battling against its violence.
Then came the wind, sweeping across the field like a tornado, blowing her first to one side, then the other, and at times urging her forward as though in sympathy with her desperate desire for shelter. As she struggled on purposefully, the storm seemed only to increase its fury, the lightning descending in a brilliant cascade of violet that enveloped her in a flood of dazzling light that was at one with the torrential rain.
Then, through the flaming curtain that hemmed her in, a sudden, streaking flash struck at her like a sword. She staggered, screamed at the shock of the concussion, and fell headlong in the sodden grass.
For several minutes she lay there, paralysed, her whole body tingling, eyes staring helplessly at the sky, which presented a picture of awe-inspiring grandeur. Chain lightning rippled in an unholy filigree against a purple background, while here and there great, humped masses of jet-black cloud seemed to dilate and quiver as pent-up energies strained for outlet. When at length the numbness had gone out of her limbs, she got to her feet, stood for a moment gazing towards London.
A red glow hung over the city, visible even through the watery haze, while forks of savage brightness stabbed down into it ever and again with merciless insistence.
Set-faced, her heart pounding, she turned and went forward again. How she covered the remaining distance she hardly knew, but when at last the yellow oblongs of light loomed large before her she was filled with a deadly weariness, her head swimming from the incessant tumult of the storm, her eyes smarting from the wind and rain. She halted, breathless, a terrible ache in her side.
Then on again, until she half slid, half fell down a muddy, slippery bank to the flooded main road that ran through Paradise Acres.
Up to her knees in surging water, she struggled across towards the road that led to her destination, less than a quarter of a mile away. Again she was forced to stop while she regained sufficient energy to continue, clinging to the railings of a tiny house whose shattered roof testified to the damaging power of the storm. More than once, as she hurried on, she passed a house that had been reduced by a stroke of that incredibly vicious lightning to a heap of smouldering rubble. She breathed a prayer of infinite relief when at last she came to the little bungalow that was her final objective, to find it stood unharmed, its unshaded windows shining like welcoming beacons.
Thankfully she leaned for a second against the gate, then flung it open and ran up the path to the front door as another of those terrible lightning forks cleaved the sky above her. The ear-splitting burst of thunder was an overwhelming accompaniment to her frantic pounding on the door, which she continued as long as she had the strength. Then suddenly an awful weakness overcame her, she sagged helplessly against the door and collapsed in a heap on the step.
* * * *
When she came to her senses, there was the sharp flavour of restorative in her mouth. The dinning chorus of thunder, howling wind, and swishing rain still assailed her ears, but seemed a little more remote, and the bright light around her shone steady and clear instead of in blinding bursts of violet. Gradually she became aware that she was lying comfortably on a low couch, at the foot of which a man stood smiling down at her.
“Levison!” She struggled up. “I thought I’d never get here—”
He pushed her gently back on her pillow, leaned over to make himself heard above the tumult outside.
“Take it easy for now. You’ve had a pretty rough journey. My housekeeper, Mrs. Dawson, fixed you up and took off your wet things. Just now she’s in the kitchen getting some tea.”
Lalia glanced down at the warm blankets that covered her. “I’m very grateful. I was about all in. I think I fainted.”
She buried her head in the pillow as a tremendous crack of thunder shook the house to its foundations, and opened her eyes to find Levison regarding her coolly. She almost screamed at him:
“Don’t you realize this place may be struck at any moment? I’ve passed several smashed houses—and London is in flames. If this terrible storm goes on through the night—”
She paused as the elderly Mrs. Dawson came in with tea on a tray. She smiled at Lalia, set down the tray, and went out again with apparent unconcern. Levison passed the cup to her.
“Now, just drink this and go to sleep —if you can. We can talk later.”
She was too exhausted to protest. Though the storm still raged, there was something about the calm assurance of Levison Read that gave her a sense of security, dissolving her useless fears. She returned the cup, sank back again on her pillow, closed her tired eyes.
When she awoke, Levison was standing by the window, through which the first faint rays of the morning sun were shining into the room. The only sounds were the steady drip of water from the choked gutters of the eaves and the tinkle of china in the kitchen.
“The storm—when did it pass?” she asked anxiously.
Levison turned. Despite his smile, there was a look almost of horror in his eyes.
“It lasted nearly six hours. Then it ceased as suddenly as it began. Suc
h fury! It must be unprecedented. I can’t make it out. Unless—”
She sat up. “I came to tell you. It was Melvin’s work—and mine. I feel I’m as much to blame for the havoc it must have caused. I helped him to build the machine....”
He listened patiently while she told him, right from the beginning. If he felt any surprise, he did not reveal it. He did not even flinch when she told him how she had found the plans of his Thought Amplifier in Melvin’s safe. She told him of her own constant suspicions and how she had repeatedly dismissed them from her mind; how her admiration for Melvin had proved stronger than her mistrust. Until, now that he had revealed himself as a vindictive ingrate whose sole object was to satisfy his mad lust for power, her affection for him had turned to bitter hatred and disillusionment.
“He’s a dangerous man, Levison,” she insisted, finally. “A genius, yes, but an utterly unscrupulous one. If he becomes Master of London, it can only end in slavery and misery for the people. He would be a ruthless tyrant, and he won’t rest until he has the whole world in his grip. Unless he can be stopped—”
Levison Read only smiled, though there was still that look of deep concern in his eyes.
“He’s more of a fool than anything,” he said quietly. “I might have known he was responsible for this. But he won’t get very far with his terror and destruction. There have been other fools....”
* * * *
Slowly Melvin Read turned away from the visi-screen, unfastened the clips of his heavy insulated suit, and stepped out of its protecting folds. For a moment he stood regarding the massive machine, now silent and inactive, its deadly work complete. He grimaced as he sniffed the heavy, stale air in the laboratory; then he turned to the door, opened it, and went swiftly along the passage. He climbed the steps, passed through the house into the cool atmosphere outside. He noticed that his own dwelling had not escaped the damaging effects of the storm, but it had not fared too badly.
Last Conflict Page 4
