“Here.” Court halted by a parked automobile. “No, there’s no gas.” He frowned, after a glance at the dashboard gauge. “Come on.”
Scipio was peering into a window. Abruptly he kicked high, and the glass fell in clattering shards. The Carthaginian reached through the gap and brought out a cavalry saber in its scabbard.
“It’s light enough,” he grunted, balancing the weapon in his hand. “But it’s sharp. We may need this.”
He fastened it to his belt, while Li Yang was peering down the street.
“Court!” the Oriental called. “What is it?”
“A Carrier—”
“I see it.”
SWIFTLY Court guided his companions around the corner. They turned west from Fifth Avenue into Fifty-eighth Street. Half a block down, they paused at sight of two more Carriers coming toward them.
Court glanced around. On his right was a street blocked with a mass of automobile wreckage. The tower of Rockefeller Plaza rose into the sky. On his left was the entrance of an office building. But through the glass doors, Court could see that the lobby was strewn with bodies, struck down as they had tried to escape the onrushing Plague.
Court wondered with a strange twinge of pity, how many of them had been ready for death. Probably none.
He came to himself abruptly. There was no time for philosophizing. The Carriers were closing in upon them from both sides. Scipio pointed to the side street.
“There. We can climb over.”
“Wait!” Court’s sharp command halted the others on the curb. “Here’s a car.”
A large, black sedan was parked a few feet away. Two bodies lay near it—a man’s and a woman’s. The girl, scarcely more than a child, lay in a pitiful little huddle on the running-board, her blond hair whitened with snow. The man, a bulky, dark young fellow, lay with his face in the gutter, a cigar still drooping from one corner of his mouth.
But the keys were in the ignition. Hastily Court sprang into the car, turned the key and pressed the starter. He really expected no response. To his surprise, the battery painfully turned the cold engine over.
Court dared waste no more time. He glanced around. With a gasp of relief, he saw that the shining bodies of the Carriers had halted. They were at least a hundred feet away, and there might still be time.
He kept his foot down on the starter. The motor caught and abruptly died. Viciously he manipulated the choke. “Get ready to run!” he warned.
But again the motor caught, and Court gunned it with great care. The echoes boomed out thunderously in the canyon of the street. Li Yang and Scipio sat tensely beside Court, more afraid of this noisy invention than the incomprehensible Carriers.
“They are coming toward us,” Scipio reported in an undertone, feeling for his saber. “I shall get out and hold them back till—”
“No!” Court let out the clutch. “Stay where you are.”
The car jerked into motion. There was a sickening moment when the motor sputtered, coughed, and almost stopped.
Court jammed down the gas, heard the exhaust pipe crack open with a deafening roar. Then they were plunging forward. . . .
But the Carriers were ominously close. Into Court’s mind came a weird, illogical thought—“Pillars of fire and smoke.” Was that it? It didn’t matter, for two of them, directly ahead, were gliding toward the car.
HE spun the wheel, skidded on the slushy pavement. He shot between the two monsters, missing them by a hair’s breadth. The sedan rocketed on, gathering speed.
Court swallowed hard and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Narrow squeak. . . . This is a oneway street,” he added with wry humor, “and we’re going the wrong way But I doubt if we’ll get a ticket.”
They crossed Sixth Avenue, then Seventh, and turned left on Broadway. Court headed for the Holland Tunnel. Before he reached the tube, he sighted a tangle of wreckage which told him that route was closed. Hastily he turned north along the Hudson, hoping he could get through at the George Washington Bridge.
The ice-bordered river flowed past silently, unruffled now by any boats. In the distance, the Jersey Palisades were traceries of frost. No smoke at all rose on the skyline.
“Gods!” Scipio observed. “This is a world of wonders, Court. What is that?”
“Grant’s Tomb,” said Court. “Let’s see what the radio says.”
He switched it on, but got only static.
He turned the switch off, for he did not know the battery’s strength. He had almost a tankful of gas, he saw, and was grateful for that. Yet it would not take him to Wisconsin.
He would take the straight western route toward Chicago, and then cut northwest, unless he could find an airplane. But in this disorganized area, Court doubted whether one would be available. They all must have been commandeered.
The bridge was open. They shot across, disregarding the glaring speed-limit signs.
Court found the highway he wanted. He sped on, seeing no sign of life. He was reminded of the last time he had driven across the Wisconsin hills, with Marion at his side. It almost seemed as though nothing had happened since then, for the landscape was still incongruously peaceful. Only one thing betrayed the existence of the Plague—the occasional wrecks seen beside the highway, and the absence of traffic. An airplane startlingly roared overhead against the blue.
But Marion was not here. Court realized that he missed her. She was the perfect complement for his mind, the ideal assistant. There was something else, too, but Court subconsciously steered away from the thought, refusing to let himself realize why he missed Marion so profoundly. He could see her clearly, a slim brown-eyed girl. . . .
Rot! Such thoughts wasted time, and there was no time to waste. Sitting beside Court now, crowded uncomfortably in the front seat, Scipio and the huge Li Yang writhed uneasily. They typified the whole new set of factors which Court must integrate into the problem facing him. His mind began to work at lightning speed. Analyzing, probing, discarding—swiftly he went over the problem as he drove the car instinctively through New Jersey.
Scipio crawled over into the back seat and went to sleep. Li Yang stretched luxuriously, holding out his plump fingers to the car heater.
“Great magic,” he said with satisfaction. “Not that I believe in magic, but the word is a handy one.”
The sedan thundered westward.
CHAPTER XVI
Thordred Strikes
DURING the two week’s of Court’s unconsciousness, a great deal had happened. Many large cities, like Manhattan, had been evacuated. If many Carriers had appeared at once, chaos might have been the result. But the Plague came with comparative slowness at first. Martial law, of course, had been declared, resulting in less indirect mortality than might have been expected.
The refugees faced neither starvation nor epidemic. With well oiled speed, the Federal Government had swung into action. All over the country, the evacuated populations of such cities as New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans were billeted in hospitable homes.
But the danger remained. More and more of the Carriers appeared. Shining, nebulous clouds of glowing fog, they slew by touch alone. There was no possible protection, for even lead armor was not always certain. Moreover, nobody knew the nature of these dread beings.
Court racked his brain as he furiously drove on. Parts of the pattern were falling into place. Entropy, he thought, was the clue. The most puzzling problem was the apparent existence of an utterly alien element—the mysterious X.
In a sane universe, this could not exist. It could not be alien. For a time he pondered the Heisenberg uncertainty factor, but discarded it as a new idea came to him.
The catalyst angle was perhaps the most logical one. Absently he reached into the dashboard compartment, expecting to find cigarettes. There was a pack in it, nearly full. Court pressed in the dashboard cigarette lighter. Li Yang watched with interest.
Court took the glowing lighter and he
ld it to his cigarette. Abruptly he paused, staring at the lighter. He whistled startledly under his breath. The Oriental blinked in astonishment.
“What—”
“An idea. Just an idea. A parallel, like conduction. Listen, Li Yang. If you take a red-hot chunk of steel and put it next to a cold piece, what’ll happen?”
“The cold piece will be warmed.”
“Yes. The heat will be transmitted. Only, it isn’t heat in this case. It’s X! X is being transmitted to living beings. . . .” Court rubbed his forehead.
“What is X? Energy? Sure, but—I’ve got it!” He almost lost his grip on the wheel in his excitement. “I’ve got it, Li Yang! Entropy, life, energy—cosmic evolution!”
“Words,” said the Oriental, shrugging indifferently. “What do they mean?”
Court began to talk slowly, carefully, picking his way along the new theory.
“Evolution goes on constantly, you know. From the day the first amoeba was born, evolution kept on steadily. It’ll always do that, all over this Universe, and in other ones, too. Well, what’s the ultimate evolution of life?”
“To what man is it given to know that?” Li Yang replied fatalistically.
“There have been lots of theories. Plenty of science-fiction writers have speculated about it—people like Verne and Wells. Some of them say we’ll evolve into bodiless brains. Well, that isn’t quite logical. Rather, it doesn’t go far enough. Brains are made of cellular tissue, and therefore can die. But thought—life energy—is the ultimate form. The final evolution is toward bodiless energy, life without form or shape. A gas, perhaps.”
The Oriental nodded. “I think I see. Well?”
COURT swung the sedan around a curve, taking it wide to avoid an overturned roadster.
“Entropy goes on, regardless. Eventually a universe is destroyed. Matter itself breaks up. But this life energy isn’t matter. It’s left unchanged. It floats on through the void, like a dark nebula.”
His eyes widened.
“Perhaps that’s the explanation for dark nebulae, like the Coal Sack, for example. Well, that doesn’t matter.
This cosmic cloud of life energy drifts through space. If it happens to reach a newly formed planet like Earth billions of years ago, life is generated in the seas, and the cycle starts again. But if life already exists—”
“As on Earth now?”
“Yes. The chunk of hot steel warms the cold one. Only, it isn’t heat that’s transmitted. It’s pure life energy, the super-life to which we’ll evolve at the end of our Universe. We’re not ready for that yet, but it’s come of its own accord.”
“I am not sure I understand,” Li Yang said thoughtfully.
“Take a familiar parallel. We know today that there’s a hormone which causes growth. A hormone is a glandular extract. If we inject an overdose of that into an infant, he’ll grow enormously. But he’ll probably be an idiot, with little control over his huge body. He should have been left to grow naturally, for he wasn’t ready for the hormone in such a large dose.
“Neither is the Earth ready for so large a step forward in evolution. But we’ve got an overdose of pure life energy, and it’s transforming human beings into another form of life.”
“Demons,” Li Yang said quietly. Court smiled uncomfortably. “Perhaps. At least into poor devils. Well, that’s the answer, but it still does not help matters. Here’s a town, and I think it has an airport.”
The field was a flurry of brightly lit activity. No carriers had yet appeared in this New Jersey city, but the air of tension was inevitable. By dint of argument, threats, pleas, and coercion, Court managed to charter a plane, though he would have no success in getting a pilot. Their services were difficult to obtain, because of the national emergency. It was lucky that Court knew how to fly.
He took time to drink black, scalding coffee at the airport restaurant, where curious glances were cast at his strange companions.
There was little information he could gain from the scattered scraps of conversation. No one could guess where the Plague might strike next. At the first sign of it, evacuation must take place, with the aid of every automobile, railroad, and plane that could be pressed into service.
A few local residents wandered in to stare curiously at the unusual activity. Their lives would continue in normal routine until the Plague actually arrived on their doorsteps.
Refreshed, Court took his companions into the plane, a speedy gyrocraft cabin ship. He felt grateful that he would not have to drive by car to Wisconsin. The trip would have necessitated a stop for sleeping. But in the plane, he could reach his destination in six hours or so.
LI Yang and Scipio were not startled by the air journey, for the golden space ship had accustomed them to aerial travel. They watched with interest the countryside below. There was little chance to talk.
The plane swept over Chicago, a desolate, evacuated metropolis. Chicagoans, Court had learned, were quartered all over Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and even Ontario. Canada, of course, had thrown open its Border. For days, crowded boats had been plying between Chicago and Benton Harbor in Michigan.
The Plague had not struck Milwaukee, however, though transportation facilities were held in readiness there. Actually only a few cities had been disrupted, and Plague deaths had been surprisingly few. The real peril, which not many knew, lay in the future, if the Plague spread and remained incurable.
At Madison, Court landed and rented a car.
The headlights were pale spears stabbing through the gloom as the highway unrolled monotonously. Court was beginning to feel sleepy, but he had purchased some benzedrine sulphate in Madison. He gulped some of the stimulant, which refreshed him.
In the back seat, Scipio polished his saber with an oiled rag he had found. Li Yang slept, choking and snoring, his head rolling ponderously in collars of fat.
Now and again, Court caught sight of Carriers—shining blobs of radiance that flashed toward them and were gone. What would happen if the car struck one? Would it rush through an impalpable glow, or would there be a catastrophic explosion of liberated energy? Court’s mind felt so blurred that he could not think clearly. His hands ached and trembled on the wheel. His elbow joints were throbbing. The soles of his feet seemed to be on fire.
But he could not stop and rest. Home was not far now, and even then there would be no peace. . . .
The road was familiar to him. Wisconsin lay under yellow moonlight, and beside the road, the river flowed along silently.
They topped a rise and came in sight of the village. It seemed unchanged. But as they swept toward it, Court noticed the absence of lights and movements.
The street was completely deserted. From the general store, a radio crackled inaudibly. On the store’s porch was the body of a man in overalls, grotesquely sprawled. A dog slunk into view, stood frozen for a second, and then fled.
Court thought with alarm of Marion Barton. Had she returned to the laboratory? Probably. But had she fled with the general exodus?
Court’s heart jumped as he saw a shining, shapeless glow drift into view from around a comer. A Carrier! Another of the horrors was joining the first. But they made no effort to molest the speeding automobile.
Court sucked in his breath. Once he reached the laboratory, all the weapons of his scientific career lay ready to his fingers. Then, knowing as he did the secret of the Plague, he could fight, perhaps destroy the Plague—and finally Thordred. Marion could help. Her aid would be invaluable, if—
“How much farther?” Scipio grunted from the back seat.
Li Yang woke up and sleepily rubbed his eyes, yawning.
“Almost there,” Court said, a queer breathlessness in his voice. Just over this rise. Hold on!”
A GLOWING shadow had loomed up sinisterly before the car, blocking the road. It was a Carrier, silent, motionless, menacing.
Court made a swift decision. He could drive straight at the thing. But that was too long a chance. Going so fast, though, he
had little choice.
He jammed on the brake, at the same time twisting the wheel. The car’s tires rasped and screamed as the vehicle slid sideward. It rolled ominously on two wheels, righted itself, and plunged off the road.
The occupants were jolted and flung about as the sedan lurched across a plowed field. A tire blew out with a deafening report. Desperately Court fought the wheel.
Bang!—Another tire had gone, but Court jammed his foot on the accelerator. In the rear mirror, he could see that the Carrier was still standing in the same place. It was not pursuing them.
He got the car back on the road, picked up speed. As it limped on, the Carrier was left behind. Court drew a deep breath.
“Gods!” Scipio bellowed. “I almost stabbed myself with this blade!”
Li Yang gurgled with amusement. “You are not as well padded as I. But I am glad our journey is almost over. It is, is it not, Court?”
“Yes. This is home—”
Court’s voice died away as he jerked the car to a halt. They were at the huge, rambling structure that had housed the laboratory. The building was gone. It had been razed to the ground in an irregular splotch of blackly charred ruin. A crater yawned among the debris.
The laboratory was destroyed, and with it, the chance to save the Earth!
Sick hopelessness was so strong in Court that for a long, dreadful moment his heart was numb. He seemed to be disassociated from his body. As if he were a distant onlooker, he stared at the sharp clarity of the ruins under the Moon. His shadow stretched out before him on the ochre pathway. On one side was the taller shadow of Scipio. On the other was the obese dark blotch thrown by Li Yang’s form. The grasses rustled dryly in the cool night wind.
The embers were still warm, for smoke coiled up lazily from the dying coals. Apparently the work of destruction had occurred lately. Was it an accident?
Collected Fiction Page 185
