“Switch on the communication receiver C; let’s hear what the news broadcast says.”
* * * *
“U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1248.
“The entire eastern coasts of North and South America are now completely covered with the jelly. Extent of the investment from ten miles to twenty-five. Spain and southern France are being slowly covered; the rest of the western coast of Europe penetrated only from a mile to five.”
* * * *
“U.S. News Service. Bulletin 1249.
“The scientific conference is still in session. No solution has as yet been arrived at, but the chairman wishes to announce that the people of the earth need not despair; progress is being made. Donald Standish, the noted astronomer, is still unaccountably missing. It is requested that any one having information as to his present location communicate at once with 2 AG, the government intelligence station.”
* * * *
Mary turned to Donald, in whose arms she was still being tightly held. “Oh, Don, why did you leave your post for me. The world needs you, why did you leave it for me?”
“Dear, if you had gone, the rest of the world could have followed for all of me. But now, now that you’re safe, we must get back. I’ve got a hunch that Doug and I together can arrive at the right thing to do. We can’t land now. Once down in that mob we’d never be able to take off again. Besides, neither of us can think straight just yet; too much has happened in the last thirty hours. We’ll soon be home now, and we’ll get busy. Drive her, Doug.”
Now the sun had overtaken them and a new day was begun. Close ahead rose the peaks of the Rockies, among them the mountain on which perched Cameron’s wilderness laboratory. A long spiral, and the little ship of the air dropped gently on the landing field at its door.
The passengers debarked stiffly from the light plane, then Douglas taxied it into the hangar. Emerging promptly, the three of them entered the house.
Physically exhausted as they were by the long journey, there was yet no thought of sleep. They were still shaking with the horror of those frightful scenes they had so recently witnessed.
Mary was tottering with weariness, but held herself bravely. Not for worlds would she permit her lover to see how near the verge of hysteria she was, now that the danger was past. She looked around the long comfortable room—cheery fireplace and all—with a shudder. How peaceful and quiet everything was—and over there—nameless horrors out of hell—the indescribable stampede of maddened humanity—the hideous screech of some poor devil engulfed by the advancing monster—no, no!—that way lay madness—she must stop.
Donald was watching her anxiously. “Mary, you must get some sleep at once.”
“I’m all right—just a little attack of nerves,” she smiled wanly. “Don’t trouble yourself about me; I want to help, too.”
“We’ll puzzle this out ourselves, and when you wake, if we’ve evolved any ideas, we’ll let you in on it. Now, be a good girl and go to bed. Haven’t you something soothing in your lab?” he turned to Douglas.
“Certainly; just the thing for you, Mary. Douglas went to the cupboard and poured out a small tumbler full of a pale liquid. “Just drink this down, and you’ll slide so smoothly into the arms of Morpheus, the next thing you know the birds will be twittering in the trees. Here you are; take it.”
Mary looked at them both for a moment—saw the worry in their eyes, and capitulated. “All right, boys, if you insist; though I’m sure I can be of help.” She drank the potion, and retired to her bedroom.
The two men filled their pipes, and settled back in their chairs. Their bodies were poisoned with fatigue, but their brains were racing keenly. For a while they smoked in silence, gratefully inhaling the fragrant fumes.
Standish was the first to break the silence.
“As you know, Doug, I have a theory that accounts for this demoniac visitation, but when I sprang it on the conference, I was laughed at for my pains.”
Douglas looked at him keenly. He knew his chum, and knew that he was not given to hazarding wild hypotheses unless they contained a solid substratum of truth.
“Go over it again,” he said quietly. “I promise to listen with an open mind.”
Donald launched again into his tale—the strange living star in the island universe—its explosive disintegration into space—the queer dust cloud of tiny globules reported by the fishing smack—followed by the appearance of this horrible amorphous life-mass that was threatening to engulf the earth.
Cameron listened intently. Thoughtfully he drummed with his fingers on the arm of his chair. He, too, was familiar with the hypotheses of Clerk-Maxwell and Arrhenius.
“There is a good deal of plausibility about your theory,” he acknowledged thoughtfully, “and it accounts also for the vast proliferating powers of this monstrous mass—no life as we know it on this planet could even approximate the uncanny speed of its growth, nor have our primitive life-forms the ability to subsist on inorganic matter to quite the extent that it has,” again absently drumming on his chair.
He relapsed into brooding thought. Standish looked at his friend, but forbore to say anything. When Cameron was on the verge of something brilliant, he always drummed. So the astronomer waited.
The break was not long in coming. Douglas’ brow suddenly cleared—a look of triumph in his eye.
“By George, I have it!” he almost shouted. “I believe your fantastic story, old man, and I’m going to rid the world of this menace. Listen to me for a moment.”
“You have my closest attention.”
“Suppose we assume the truth of your hypothesis. Then this living world, moving in the Andromeda universe, shining by its own luminosity, separated by unthinkable distances from any hot gaseous star, would naturally be accustomed only to the faint starlight of the heavens. No such blaze of light as even our ordinary sunlight ever came within its ken. Now you’ve heard of phototropism?”
Standish nodded his head, but his friend went on heedlessly, absorbed in the plan maturing in his mind.
“It’s the reaction of protoplasm to light,” he explained. “If you take any unicellular animal like the amoeba, and expose it to a strong light, it will shrink away from the source of the light, and try to get out of its path. If you use a powerful ray of concentrated ultraviolet light—the reaction will be much more apparent—the amoeba will literally run for its life—and if exposed long enough to the rays, will die.
“Now if we can obtain such drastic results with life forms inured and habituated by constant exposure to the sun’s rays continually beating on our planet, what about this alien protoplasmic mass, unaccustomed to strong light of any kind, and no doubt feeling irritable even during our normal sunshine?”
Standish sat up excitedly. He was beginning to catch the drift of Cameron’s reasoning.
Douglas went on. “My plan is this. Have the nations of the world concentrate their technicians and engineers in the power plants and factories most remote from the menace. Construct huge searchlights of the utmost candle power; and machines for casting enormous beams of ultra-violet light. In the meantime have the people of the areas endangered by the billowing march of the monster retreat to the mountain fastnesses. That can be done fairly easily—its progress from all reports is approximately ten to fifteen miles a day. When all is in readiness, mount our machines on tractors, and drive them in front of the encroaching fiend. When it comes within striking distance, turn on the juice full blast. The power will come by tuned radio waves from the power plants operating in the hinterland. If our theories are correct, on the impact of our rays, the viscid mass will react much more violently than an amoeba or paramecium would. Retreat would be all it would think of, and the more exposed masses would be killed off. In that way, we could get rid of the menace, or at least drive it back into the ocean, by following it steadily all the way.”
Standish
got up in enthusiasm, and wrung Cameron’s hand. “Boy, you’re a wizard! That’s a marvelous scheme! You’ll be the savior of the world!”
“Hold on a moment,” Douglas smiled protestingly, “it may work and it may not. Remember, I’m basing my scheme on your hypothesis.”
“It’ll work all right,” returned Donald confidently, “and now I know I’m right, too.”
“Don’t run away so fast,” warned the bacteriologist. “Remember, at the best, we shall only have managed to drive it back into the ocean. Once there, we can do no more. There, in the vast depths of the sea, with what we know of the rapidity of its procreation, it will once more overwhelm the world.”
Donald groaned. “There you go—get me all excited, and then you let me down. I forgot that part. So what’s the good of your swell scheme?”
“Ah! but I have something else up my sleeve,” grinned his companion. “You know, of course, that I’ve been working my head off trying to find a cure for cancer. I haven’t succeeded as yet—though the outlook is promising. But in the course of my researches, I’ve invented a technique for excising cancer growths from the living organism, and growing them independently in special culture media. I have also discovered a method of activating them so that when replaced in living tissues they will multiply with unbelievable rapidity. At present, I have on hand here in the laboratory about fifty pounds of activated cancer cultures, and that is sufficient for my purpose.
“Now to get back to your theory again. If this visitation is in truth from an alien world, it is highly improbable that it was ever exposed to the disease of cancer. If that is so, then it lacks whatever immunity our life has obtained through constant exposure, and the cancer cells will spread like wildfire through the whole vast organism—and this malign influence will be eradicated from the face of the earth.”
“Man, I repeat—you’re a wizard!” The astronomer pumped his hand violently. Then an idea struck him. “But why not spray it with cancer immediately—why bother with ultra-violet light to drive it into the depths of the sea.”
“Because,” explained Douglas patiently, “cancer is no respecter of persons, and once let loose on land, it is liable to spread to all forms of earth life, and we shall only have succeeded in destroying ourselves too. In the ocean, however, the range is sharply limited—we shall instruct the people of the earth to remain inland until the danger is passed. Once killed, the whole mass will descend to the floors of the seas and there the cold and pressure will destroy the cancerous tissues.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” was the admiring retort.
“Now to get into immediate communication with the conference chairman and unfold our plan.”
“Right—there’s not a moment to lose. The fate of the world is in the balance.”
In a few minutes, the radio transmitter was sputtering out the code call signal of the conference. A lapse of five minutes and word came back. “Radio Emergency Conference talking—what is it?”
“Standish sending from the laboratory of Cameron in Colorado. Plan for combating menace has been evolved. Please connect me with the chairman.” Then, for a solid hour across the ether vibrated the saving word.
Back came the answer. “Sounds all right. Our last hope anyway. Broadcasting immediately to all the nations to mobilize tractor, searchlights, ultra-violet apparatus. United States will mobilize on eastern length of Appalachian within twenty-four hours. Both of you report for service immediately at Allentown, Pa. Last reports show inundation extended as far as Scranton. Signing off.”
“We need some sleep—let’s snatch a few hours—and start,” suggested Standish.
“Righto, we can get there in fifteen hours. We’ll need only an hour or two for assembling our material here. That gives us plenty of time for a snooze.”
Almost instantaneously, both were sleeping—drugged.
* * * *
When they awoke, it was dusk. Mary was still asleep—a peaceful smile flitting over her lips. Donald looked at her tenderly.
“Let’s not disturb her. Poor girl—she has been through hell.” He brushed her forehead lightly with his lips, and the smile grew into ecstasy, but still she did not awaken.
“Now to work!”
They hurried into the laboratory. Cameron opened the door of a huge glass-lined oven, thermostatically controlled at blood heat. In the interior were twenty or more glass dishes, each containing a mass of tissue floating in culture media.
“These are my cancer growths,” he explained. “They will live indefinitely in the cultures. Now to activate them so that when we cast them into the protoplasmic horror, they will grow and proliferate with extreme rapidity.”
He turned to a row of glass stoppered bottles on his laboratory shelf, and took one down. It was filled with a pale green liquid. Carefully, with a pipette, he dropped five drops into each dish. A slight bubbling ensued—and then ceased.
“Bring that cabinet in the corner over here,” he ordered, “and all the cotton wool you find in the end cupboards.”
The cabinet was opened—a layer of cotton placed on the bottom—the cancer dishes placed carefully between layers of the soft material, and then the whole affair hermetically sealed.
“Now we’re ready to go.”
The two men quickly and silently donned their flying suits, and in short order the plane was trundled out of the hangar; the cabinet was carefully lifted into the cockpit, and they took their seats. The motor roared; and the plane took off on its flight across the continent.
Next morning, as the first rays of dawn appeared over the serried tops of the Alleghany Mts., the haggard, wearied travelers descended stiffly from their plane after landing on the airfield outside Allentown.
For a moment they gazed about them in dazed astonishment. The place was seething with activity. Hundreds of planes were landing on all sides; tractors were lumbering and roaring over the field, soldiers and vast crowds of workmen swarmed in organized disorder.
“Where is the commander?” asked Donald of a big burly sergeant actively engaged in expending a stream of profanity at a company of men unpacking a huge searchlight.
“Over there!” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the hangar at one end of the field, without deigning to turn around; and with hardly a pause in his flow of lurid objurgations.
“Come on, Doug, let’s report at once, and see what we can do.”
At the door, they gave their names to the guard, and were ushered in immediately.
Seated at a rough pine board table, hastily built to function as a desk, was General Black, grizzled veteran of the World War, now commander-in-chief of all the American Armies! Officers dashed in—came to stiff salute—reported in staccato accents—received their orders even more crisply—and dashed out again. A field radio receiving set whined. The general put the phone to his ear. “What’s that—only thirty miles away! All right—report every fifteen minutes on its progress.”
Turning around, he saw the two scientists. “Yes, what is it? Make it snappy!”
They introduced themselves, and the general’s attitude became more cordial.
“I hope your ideas are correct—if not, we’re all doomed.” He sighed. “Frankly, I’m not used to this sort of thing—out of my line. Artillery—machine guns—gas—yes! But not this new-fangled stuff.
“However, we’ll soon find out,” he continued grimly, “my air scouts report it as only thirty miles away. At the rate it is traveling, it will be here in forty-eight hours. We’ll be ready for it in about thirty-six hours—and then—” he shrugged fatalistically. “In the meantime, I’ll get some quarters for you, and you can make yourselves comfortable until we’re ready to start.” He turned to an orderly, and soon the scientists were installed in a barrack-like room—their plane with its precious freight wheeled into the hangar, and placed under guard.
The ne
xt thirty-six hours were filled with feverish activity. All through the day and night, tractors kept coming in—apparatus and the requisite machines were deposited from planes, railroads, automobiles, every conceivable method of transportation.
In the meantime the radio reports were becoming more and more alarming. Inexorably the living tide was moving forward—swallowing everything in its path. Twenty miles away—fifteen miles—activity becoming frantic—ten miles—five miles—the last feverish touches—and all was in readiness for the supreme effort.
As far as the eye could see, stretched serried ranks of tractors. Along the whole Appalachian range, thousands of tractors were ready to go at the signal of command. On each was perched a powerful searchlight or violet ray machine capable of casting directional beams over a ten-mile radius. The final orders were given—everyone not directly concerned in the management of the apparatus was sent to the rear.
It was the zero hour!
Already in the distance, the horizon was glowing with the dreaded greenish light—the vast menace was flowing—flowing forward.
A hush fell on the embattled array. Could they stop it—was it victory or disaster? The bravest among them felt clammy hands clutching their hearts.
The radio command roared its voice along the far-flung line. The motors roared—the current snapped on—and a blaze of light—intense—penetrating—flared out up and down the line. Another command—and the tractors moved forward—slowly—steadily. A ten-mile zone of intense illumination—blinding in its glare—moved ahead. It approached the green luminescence. Still the monstrous life flowed forward.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 39
