Avon Science Fiction Reader 2

by Unknown Author

  Not that we know the whole truth yet. Parts are still missing. But it is a probability that we may some day know more about the nature and origin of The Whisperers, for the outposts of knowledge are constantly being, pushed farther, and the cosmos made to yield up one by one its deeper riddles. In the absence of complete data, however, we can only speculate as to the truth, while accepting the best explanation that scientists have advanced.

  The first item concerning The Whisperers to he published was a short news dispatch sent out by the Soviet government from Moscow. The item Wits not used by the majority of newspapers in Europe and America. Those that did print it treated it either as a curiosity or an inside filler,

  Moscow, April 2—Villagers of Kutsk, a trading post in northern Siberia, recently witnessed the fall of a glowing object from the sky, according to delayed reports which have just reached civilization. Investigation disclosed. the object nil the outskirts of the village in a small area of newly melted snow and ice. The, object proved to be an ovoid of greenish metal £, foot long and shaped somewhat like a toy Zeppelin.

  Unable to find an opening, but discovering by tapping that it was hollow, the villagers smashed the object. This is said to have been done with great difficulty owing to the toughness of the peculiar metal. The inside was completely filled with a jellylike substance. Most of this was iridescent and evil-smelling, but part was reddish-gray and odorless. Government chemists will analyze the substance in art effort to determine whether foreign powers or reactionary interests within the party have been experimenting with new war devices.

  The item was followed a day later by an additional bulletin which, though briefer, received wider publication,

  Moscow, April 3—The small metal object that was yesterday reported to have fallen in Kutsk, Siberia, is the source of a further mystery according to word now received. The reddish-gray substance that filled part of the object is said to make a low sound which is barely within the range of audibility. The smashed container and contents are now on the way to Moscow for chemical analysis.

  In the early days of the Soviet regime, even such, scant information as this would have been rigidly censored, Fortunately for civilization, time and experience had modified many of the Soviet’s principles. In the Twenty-first Century, her scientists gave close cooperation to scientists in other lands, and news of all kinds, including unfavorable reports, was issued as rapidly as available. ,

  The third bulletin, issued two days later, won fairly general publication, but, rather for its oddity than for any disturbing quality it contained.

  Moscow, April 4—A medical mystery has just been reported in Kutsk, the Siberian village where a strange metal object was recently Lund. One of the villagers, Serge Aleghileff, by an odd coincidence the very man who found the object, has been stricken by fever. His body gives off a low, murmuring sound that is distinctly audible. Observers declare the sound to have no connection with his vocal cords, and that trickery is impossible.

  The villagers regard M. Aleghileff as having supernatural powers. They put up a strenuous resistance when an airplane was sent from Zelingrad, the nearest own with facilities, to take the man to the hospital there.

  Physicians here are much interested in the case. M. Vilanov, commissar of public health, states that he has never: heard of a similar case and believes it to be unique in medical history.

  The next bulletin again resorted to brevity, and simply stated that the metal object and contents reached Moscow by airplane, but that the jellylike substance, contrary to earlier reports, was of a uniformly iridescent and malodorous nature. None of the stuff had a reddish-gray color. It was not disclosed whether some of the material had been lost in transit, whether the Erst report was inaccurate, or whether exposure to air had reduced it to a single state.

  A separate paragraph declared that Aleghileff had reached Zelingrad, and that hospital attaches were mystified by the symptoms of his illness. No explanation had yet been advanced for the whispering sound that emanated from his flesh.

  The reports that really made the headlines and began to attract widespread attention was the following announcement:

  Moscow, April 8—The U.S.S.R. today declared a state of extreme emergency to exist in the Siberian village of Kutsk and summarily executed the entire population of 230 men, women, and children. This drastic step was taken for the benefit of the public and only after careful investigation. No visitors are allowed to approach within ten kilometers of the village, under penalty of instant execution by the rules of martial law.

  A total of 64 other individuals have been seized in Zelingrad and Moscow and placed in absolute isolation under military guard.

  The reasons given for these extraordinary measures are based on the finding of a small metal object shaped like a projectile near Kutsk several days ago. The object was taken to Zelingrad and transhipped to Moscow. A second airplane departed for Kutsk and flew back with Serge Aleghileff for hospitalization. M. Aleghileff had contracted a hitherto unknown fever that caused his entire body to give off a murmuring sound. The aviator who flew the victim to Zelingrad reported that every individual in Kutsk emitted the same puzzling sibilance, and that hysteria had seized the populace.

  Aleghileff was admitted to the hospital at Zelingrad but, died within a few hours. Until the end, his body was the source of a singular rustling sound not unlike the movement of a swarm of maggots, but without visible cause. At death, his body rapidly passed from the fever flush which had reddened it and changed to an iridescent play of colors accompanied by a foul odor before putrefaction had begun. The whispering sound persisted but gradually became fainter and was no longer audible several hours after death.

  A scouting planer instantly ordered to Kutsk, sent a radio report that the streets of the village were strewn with dead, and that the remainder of the population suffered from the whispering fever. As a matter of public welfare, airplanes loaded with lethal gases were immediately dispatched to the scene. The epidemic is considered more remarkable because of the bitter cold Weather, temperatures of 40 to 60 degrees below zero having prevailed in the district for the past week.

  Alcghileff was the first person to find, handle, and open the metal object that fell On the outskirts of the village. Authorities are convinced that a definite connection exists between the object and the outbreak of the malady. This view is supported by the fact that several nurses, internes, and surgeons at the Zelingrad Hospital who treated the patient have developed both the fever and the whispering.

  A general order was then issued for the military police to detain and isolate but avoid contact with all persons who had any direct or indirect part whatsoever in the handling of the metal object or of Aleghileff.

  Public health and military officials are cooperating to control the situation. Grave suspicion is entertained that disease microbes of a new malignant kind were deliberately loosed by a foreign power, and that only an accident caused the carrier to fall in a sparsely populated area.

  All workers are requested to keep a vigilant watch for additional projectiles, but to avoid direct contact with any that may be found, and to report them immediately.

  Meanwhile, the intelligence division of the military police has been given the sterilized container for inspection to determine its workmanship and origin. Metallurgic chemists and other technical experts have also been detailed to analyze the metal.

  M. Vilanov, in a preliminary report before his detention and isolation, declared that he had found no trace of bacteria in the iridescent substance, He advanced the theory that it may be a toxic poison capable of being absorbed through the skin and of creating further body toxins communicable to other persons through skin contact.

  Thus far, the exact nature of the substance is unknown, and the parts bf the greenish container have puzzled experts. It is expected that further analysis will disclose the unidentified metal to be an alloy of the tungsten-chromium-cobalt group.

  There is no cause for alarm and the U.S.S.R
. announces that the situation is well in hand. The prompt measures taken effectively checked the outbreak. The general warning was issued purely as a precautionary measure, to facilitate the swift destruction of any further projectiles that may be found.

  Subsequent developments made the last paragraph seem ironic. From then on, the dispatches were longer arid more ominous. Day by day, the headlines grew in prominence and larger space was devoted to The Whisperers. They passed from a filler to a “must,” advanced from inside columns to a front-page box, expanded from a box to a half column, rose to a number three and a number two head, earned a seven-column streamer, crowded more and more other news off the front page.

  The Whisperers reduced Hood arid legislation, national and local events to insignificance. They made the records of murder trials dull reading. They sent practically all other news into the wastebasket. In six days, The Whisperers leaped from oblivion to the international limelight. In ten days, they advanced from single-deck to four-deck streamers on even the most conservative papers. They were news. They were the only news that mattered.

  Through the entire duration of The Whisperers, two brilliant young American scientists played a leading part. These two. men have since become famous, but at the time they were comparatively obscure. Dr. A. E. Chard at thirty was already achieving notice in medical circles as an outstanding diagnostician with a specialized interest in infectious diseases. Warren E. Langley, Sc.D., at thirty-five was drawing a fat salary from the Optical Instrument Supply Co. for research work in the field of photomicrography.

  These two men were intimately connected with the history of The Whisperers, but worked behind the scenes in their own quiet way. Their names were seldom mentioned and did not make the headlines until the latter phases of the epidemic.

  By that time so many theories had been offered, so many remedies suggested, so many accredited scientists fallen by the wayside along with the usual number of cranks and quacks that the proposals of Langley and Chard, while welcomed as any ray of light was, met with a considerable degree of skepticism. .

  The two scientists obtained their first association with The Whisperers when Chard walked into the O.I.S. Co.’s laboratories late on the afternoon of April 6th to see Langley. They had known each other for a number of years and saw each other frequently. A close friendship had developed because each had a vital interest in the other’s field. Chard was attempting to isolate and classify the filterable viruses, those bacteria so tiny that they pass through the finest porcelain filters. Most of all, Chard hoped that someone would perfect the equipment to see and photograph the viruses. Langley was exactly the man, for Langley was experimenting with lenses and methods for ever higher magnifications.

  The physician found Langley tinkering with a hopelessly elaborate mechanism of slides, focal beams, interferometers, interference refractometers, coils, amplifiers, prisms, projection beams, microspectroscopes, micrometric electrical devices, and other parts.

  The physicist glanced up. “Hello, Chard, what’s the news?”

  “Not much, except that they’ve captured a whispering man somewhere in Russia.”

  “A whispering man? What’s news about that?”

  Chard shrugged. “He’s supposed to have a fever that makes his body give off a whispering sound, but it’s probably just some reporter’s imagination getting the best of him. What’s new in super-photomicrography?”

  Langley frowned wearily. “Very little, if anything. We haven’t been able to obtain magnifications of much more than 10,000 diameters.”

  “And how high will you have to go to make filterable viruses visible?” “At least 1,000,000, if not more,” Langley replied. “It will be no small feat to accomplish. If we could raise the power to 1,000,000, we might be able to get at the heart of the riddles of energy and matter. We might even see what an electron looks like, or the point at which energy becomes matter. We could open up new worlds that are scarcely dreamed of. The trouble is that when magnification exceeds 10,000 diameters, the true image acquires such distortions from atmospheric interference and from the limitations of optical instruments as to be worthless for serious study. I don’t, think that lenses alone will ever solve the problem.”

  Chard looked at the complicated mechanism beside Langley. “How “will, it be solved?”

  “I don’t know yet, but possibly by the use of microscopic photo electric cells and the conversion of one form of energy into another form. Sound can be converted into electric impulses and reconverted into sound as in the telephone, and then amplified to almost any degree. There is no theoretical reason why the same process couldn’t be used on micro-organisms.

  “What I am trying to do is to reflect an infinitesimal beam of light from a micro-organism, thus throwing its image on a minute photo-electric cell of extremely delicate sensitivity. The various light values of the image will then be converted to electric values of micromillimetric intensity, whose current probably won’t exceed .00000000.1 to .000001 of an ampere.

  “The next step will be the amplification of this current and then reconversion of the electric values to light values directly upon a photoscreen or projected upon the ordinary cloth screen. It’s a terrifically difficult problem all in all, because the measurements are so microscopic and the conversions must he absolutely accurate, without loss or distortion.”

  Langley, if anything, understated the difficulties of the problem. For a few minutes. Chard silently watched the other man tinker with his invention, before continuing on his way. Langley by then was so absorbed in the complex creation that he did not notice Chard s departure.

  The doctor had put in a hard afternoon’s work at a free clinic, but he toiled till late at night on his researches into the realm of the filterable viruses, Chard had no more conception of what one of these submicroscopic organisms looked like than any one else did. He could, however, pursue certain. Fines of investigation with practical results.

  Experimentation with drugs and chemicals, toxins and antitoxins, frequently led to valuable discoveries in controlling or counteracting the ravages of filterable viruses. Such successes did not in the least satisfy him. He never would be satisfied until he could see and describe one of these micro-organisms, and until he could watch them in the midst of their deadly work.

  To most people, the coming of The Whisperers was a catastrophe of such unparalleled importance that it drove every other thought from their minds. To Chard and Langley, among a mere handful of men throughout the world, The Whisperers served as a tremendous stimulus to the activity which they were already pursuing.

  The confident prediction of the Soviet government had been premature. It was being tragically refuted at the very instant that it flashed to other parts of the globe. The Whisperers had not been halted. Isolation had proved a failure. In one respect, the fears of the government proved correct: every individual who had been isolated contracted the whispering fever. But so did countless individuals who had been in the vicinity of the sufferers. And not only the prisoners, but their guards, and the military police who had made the arrests and friends or unwary strangers, walked to the accompaniment of an appalling whisper within a day.

  On April 8th, 64 new cases developed, chiefly in Moscow and Zelingrad. These victims were detained as a precautionary measure. On April 9th, over 600 additional cases made their appearance in Moscow alone. On April 10th, the number leaped to more than 10,000, with new cases developing in such vast numbers that hospitals, physicians, and undertakers were swamped. By April 11th there were 300,000 patients in Moscow, and there was no longer any attempt to bury the dead. They littered the streets, and were left there, for evacuation of the capital had been going on for two days by the terror-driven populace, and the universal thought was flight from this dreadful scourge.

  The inconceivable rapidity with which the malady spread and the terrifying whisper that marked its inception were but two of the factors that created panic. The main characteristics were the fever, followed by a
prickling sensation over the entire body, then a gradual feeling of drowsiness, then the end, suddenly and without warning. The malady ran its course in two days or less.

  Doctors were helpless to combat it because they caught it and died before they had an opportunity to analyze blood specimens. Extraordinary hemorrhages accompanied death—hemorrhages of the brain, the internal organs, the arterial system, as if the lining of every cell and the walls of every gland, organ, and artery suddenly dissolved. Death seem horrible because of the lovely colors that rippled in iridescent mockery over the skins of the corpses.

  To the living, the most horrible aspect of The Whisperers was the low,’ murmurous sound that marked the incubation of the plague. That sound, like the voice of death, as if the maggots were already swarming in the flesh that was soon to be theirs, drove hundreds of patients to suicide and brought raving madness to others. There was no escape from it. It sounded from homes and clung like an invisible presence to crowds. It filled the air with a monotonous and mournful sound.

  By airplane and stratoplane, by car, train, hut, or any other available vehicle, the refugees streamed from the city. They pouted out in all stages of dress, abandoning houses and property, deserting machines, work, everything in the urgency of departure. The situation had got utterly beyond control, as the government admitted in its early frantic appeals for assistance. After the first few days, however, there was no government left. The officials had precipitately scattered to all points of the compass.