Windows rattled in their frames. Objects on the desk jarred with the vibration. In the heavens outside, the terrific report shattered to the four corners of the horizon.
“It’s come!” Howard Sykes shouted, getting a grip on himself again. “The storm’s here! They’ve started changing the atmosphere! We’ve got to get the people into basements wherever we can. This storm will make more hideous anything in the history of the elements before it’s finished. Better give the orders, sir!”
Baxter jumped to the radio and switched on the emergency band. As he gave his commands to the controllers of the population, with instructions to relay the information to other cities and countries, the storm roared in ear-shattering concussions.
Appalled, Howard Sykes stood by the window. Before his gaze lightning slashed the sky in zigzagging bolts of blue fire. Monstrous trees of electricity hurtled down the now totally black sky toward the city buildings. Here and there pieces of masonry flashed and exploded into dust under the violent onslaught.
“Radio’s gone dead!” Baxter announced suddenly, glancing up. “Must have struck the power house—”
He headed for the door, then glanced up in alarm at a sudden vast concussion from above. Sykes glanced up, too, in time to see the white enameled ceiling suddenly part across its entire length.
Plaster and bricks came raining down through the gap. A beam splintered further along.
Sykes had scarce a moment in which to make up his mind. Self-preservation sent him hurtling through the open doorway like a stone from a catapult. Even as he scrambled through it a deluge of masonry, steel bracing and upper structure came thundering down.
Countless tons of debris dropped cruelly on the members of the World Council and the well-nigh frantic Baxter and wiped them out in a second of time!
Sick with horror, Howard Sykes blundered down the passage, his way lighted by the blinding flashes of lightning. He was joined by scurrying men and women, most of them from the other departments represented in the vast Administration Building. In a shouting, hysterical mob they rushed down the broad staircase or crammed into the elevators, only to find the power was off. Sykes headed for the basement.
The thunder, the tortured rupturing of the air by electric discharges, was something beyond imagining. The whole building responded to the cannonade. Windows cracked and shattered, instruments in fragile cases crumpled up, electroliers in the ceilings started swaying as the building maintained a steady trembling.
In a sudden onslaught rain came splashing down—a hammering deluge which descended in hissing torrents on the steps outside the building and sent little rivers rolling into the broad entrance hall. Howard Sykes stopped long enough to assist the hall porter to close the doors.
Outside, the air seemed suffused with purple. Chain lightning was leaping in devastating streaks up and down the midnight dark of the heavens and from building to building. Not a soul was in the rain-lashed streets; everybody had taken to shelter. Only abandoned cars and buses were visible, clear targets for the fury of the onslaught.
Once the street doors were closed, the horror was shut out. Shaken, Howard Sykes went below into the basement, took his place among the mass of white-faced men and women. To most of them, unaware of the scientific nature of the storm, it looked as though the end of the world had come.
Far from letting up in the space of a few hours, the storm seemed to increase its hellish fury until it was noticeable even down in the bowels of the earth. Through the vast walls of concrete the onslaught of lightning crept ominously. There were visible flashes of purple fire at intervals, stupendous concussions that could only mean the collapse of buildings in the neighborhood.
Howard Sykes was the first man in the Administration Building to notice that the air in the cellar was getting curiously thin. It was becoming harder to take a deep breath, and his heart was pumping far more rapidly than usual. A sense of odd lightness came to him presently, as though something was buoying him up.
The men around him tore open their collars and mopped at sweat-streaming faces. Women began to gasp painfully, dropped helplessly to the floor in a dead faint.
“Say, something’s wrong here!” The man next to Howard Sykes turned a lean, perspiring face. “Air’s giving out. Vents to the surface must be choked.”
“You’re right there, brother,” Sykes said, and gasped with the effort.
Then his eyes widened. This man was Steve Walters, one of Earth’s best-known zoologists. For his part, Walters’ recognition was mutual.
“Why, Ambassador Sykes! This is one devil of a fix, isn’t it?”
“You’re telling me! Say, you’re Steve Walters, aren’t you? Well, let’s put our heads together. Maybe we can figure some kind of an out.”
Walters nodded vigorously. Both men pricked up their ears then; there was an almost imperceptible lull in the onslaught outside, but even as they listened the storm seemed to subside. Half the inmates of the basement now were stretched out on the floor, gasping for breath. The others looked ashen-faced, exhausted.
“Well, let’s take a crack at it,” Sykes said grimly. “No use dying like rats in a trap.”
Sykes got to his feet, stumbled as the peculiar lightness of the atmosphere caught at his lungs. Walters came staggering to his side with an alarmed expression on his face.
“What the hell—”
“The Triumvirate boys don’t miss a trick,” Sykes growled. “First they thin the air, then they distort gravity to the equal of that on Mars. All right—give me a hand here.”
Together they unbolted the basement door. The minute it swung open, a deluge of water cane rumbling in to make more miserable the prostrate people. They got up from the floor hastily, only to stagger about and gape at what had gone wrong with their weight.
Slowly, Sykes and Walters climbed the steps to the external exit of the basement. A cool, fresh wind blew in their faces; twilight darkness was all about them. Evidently it was normal night now for a moon was shining through ragged, dispersing clouds. Something was wrong—very much wrong.
“My God!” was all Walters could say, when they came to looking at the city. “Oh, my God!”
Howard Sykes stood motionless, taking in the scene. Behind him feet were shifting on the steps as people came shuffling up. They gathered in a baffled, panting little group and stared open-mouthed at what had been a mighty city a few hours before. Now it was a desolate shambles. The familiar skyline had disappeared. In their stead were blackened skeletons gaunt against the darker night, debris-glutted rivers where broad streets and magnificent highways had graced a progressive city, ugly tattered facades lined in ghostly parade against the moon.
“Destroyed!” Steve Walters whispered. “New York wiped out in a few short hours. I—I wonder what happened to London, Paris, Moscow—”
“Probably the same catastrophe that struck at New York,” Sykes said unhappily.
He turned then to face the silent, unnerved group of people that had emerged from the basement behind them.
“My friends,” Howard Sykes began in tones of assurance he didn’t feel, “we are the victims of a vicious plot organized and carried out, as you now probably know, by a group of three Earth scientists on Mars—the so-called Triumvirate.
“The Triumvirate has committed unpardonable acts of aggression against the innocent people of Earth! Up to now, we have had no weapons with which to strike back. But have courage! As Dudley Baxter and World President Johnston would say, were they happily alive, all of us must now stand together to present a united front against the enemy.
“With God and justice on our side, we shall yet find a way to turn back the enemy at our very gates and destroy them to the last man. It is as inevitable as the future history of mankind. Progress, not wholesale death, is our stated destiny!
“Since I am the last remaining official on Earth, I will undertake to organize the peoples of Earth in an invincible army which will wipe out the evil forces of enslavement and death!�
�
For a moment after he finished speaking, there was a hushed silence. Then a great roar of approval seemed to surge upward from the very souls of the people about him.
Howard Sykes had thrown down the gauntlet, in the teeth of diabolical genius. Could the people of the world mobilize for effective resistance before that brave challenge was taken up?
CHAPTER V
Invasion!
It was only as the days passed, as some sign of order was restored out of the dreadful chaos and communications were slowly re-established, that the full story of the frightful catastrophe could be pieced together. It became clear that in six hours of elemental horror, the scientific machinery ruled by the Triumvirate—at the behest of the Martian bacilli—had accomplished a dual purpose.
Electric forces, begotten of the cosmos itself, if the force of the onslaught was any guide, had simultaneously reduced the atmospheric pressure to that compatible with Mars in its heyday, while those same electric energies had evidently penetrated right through the earth to displace and shift the electronic structure of matter itself.
The earthquake and violent electric effects at the height of the storm had been the outward sign of this. In that time energies had been shifted and rebalanced. Matter itself had undergone a change. Mass had given off energy and lessened its molecular constitution, thereby cutting down its former attractive force to that of Mars itself.
By degrees small representative governments sprang up again in the ruins of the world’s cities. What few men there were left with either political or scientific gifts did their best to marshal some sense of order, set about the slow and painful rebuilding of what they had lost.
Howard Sykes, the only surviving representative of the World Council, along with a few remaining scientists and experts, made himself a leader and established new headquarters in the ruins of New York. With builders and technicians he did his best to try and get things on a decent footing again, worked ceaselessly to alleviate the sufferings of the people. In most of this he had the unstinted aid of the unimaginative but willing Steve Walters.
The first thing Sykes did was to re-establish the inter-spatial radio station, in order that he might receive any further messages from Eva Wayne. To contact the girl herself was impossible, might indeed put her in worse danger. For another thing, his own trip to Mars was for the moment out of the question. The storm had racked his personal space ship to little splinters.
Then on a calm, clear day in late March the expected invasion arrived.
Radio reports began to pour in from ocean and land alike of the presence of a thin and irritating mist of spore-like objects. Starting in the equatorial regions, the news spread rapidly to all parts of the globe and within six hours the actual mist arrived over New York.
The evening sun was blotted out by a brown curtain, as myriads of tiny objects dropped to the ground and were whisked by the wind to pile up like snow against ledges and sidewalks.
“It isn’t possible that they’re bacilli themselves,” Howard Sykes said to the gathered men in his headquarters. “Bacilli are only visible under the microscope. So these Martian bacilli are probably encased in these ball-like containers, which will either melt or break up later on to release their cargoes of death.”
“That settles it!” Steve Walters exclaimed. “At last we’ve got something tangible to attack!”
“Right! We’ve concentrated in the past few months on the building of endless numbers of flame-throwers, and they alone are likely to get rid of the stuff. I’ll give the order to get the counter-attack under way immediately!”
But though Howard Sykes’ command was given and promptly carried out; though fleets of land tractors and airplanes newly built and fitted with long-range flame guns went at once into action, it was obvious that the counter-attack was doomed to failure.
The Triumvirate had planned their invasion too well for an early defeat to be possible. For the Earth forces to cover every part of the world with flame guns was utterly out of the question, yet no method short of this could ensure the absolute destruction of the myriads of spores.
As Howard Sykes had expected, the shell-like containers burst open after an hour or so. What happened then was not visible, since the bacilli were outside visual range. Only when vast numbers of them congregated together in a black swarming mass was it possible to detect them and attack.
Under the sublime Martian conditions produced on Earth, however, the growth of the menace was staggering in its speed. Though millions of the things were destroyed by every known means in every country, tens of thousands arose to take their place, harmless enough to life from the point of view of disease but deadly when it came to intelligence.
They grew almost under one’s eyes, following the usual form of bacilli by expanding into rods, spheres, and all manner of diverse shapes.
Their method of feeding seemed to consist of consuming nitrates from the ground, and there was much to suggest that they were able also to utilize parts of the atmospheric gases for their sustenance. Watching their progress anxiously, Sykes and his colleagues could gradually piece together the nature of the things.
They conversed by telepathy, that was evident. Their intelligence was of a high order too, and was obviously maturing as they grew in size. That they would ultimately come to dominate mankind was more than a grim possibility…
By the end of April, millions of the things had become full grown, though their exact intentions were still wrapped in mystery. They could be seen floating through the air over city and countryside. Some seemed to drift with apparent aimlessness. Others would sometimes depart in hordes into the sky and be lost to sight. Some weeks later they would reappear and begin to drift.
Several times Howard Sykes watched this queer migration, until gradually the truth began to filter in upon him.
“Is it possible that the damnable things can fly through space?” he asked Steve Walters one day. “It is well known that bacilli spores—even the tiny normal ones—can resist the temperature of absolute zero. These things possibly fly to Mars and back through some process of their own.”
Walters shrugged, his thin face long and gloomy.
“So what? All that concerns me is the fact that we can’t defeat the damned things!”
“Yeah. But somehow their ability to fly through space—if that is what it is—gives me an idea.”
Sykes scratched his chin pensively, deep in thought. Then he looked up in surprise as the door burst open to admit Roy Granville, the young chief radio engineer.
“Mr. Sykes—Mars is contacting us! Quick!” And he dashed out again at top speed.
Howard Sykes flashed one glance at Walters, then tore out of the room like a whirlwind, down the passage and into the radio transmission-reception department on the lower floor. It was the faraway voice of Eva Wayne!
“I must speak to Howard Sykes if is still alive. If not, somebody in full authority. Hello! Calling Earth! Urgent—”
“Okay, Eva, go ahead! It’s me!” Sykes sat down at the transmitter.
He fretted and fumed at the delay in transmission and reception across the spatial gulf. Then the girl’s voice came in again, eager and excited.
“Hello, Howard! Oh, thank God you’re safe! I know what these Martian fiends did to Earth. Dr. Brown and the others had to do it—they couldn’t help themselves! Listen, I’ve found out what they are trying to do.
“The principal controlling Martian bacilli are those in the bloodstreams of Dr. Brown and his two main colleagues, as well as in the systems of several of the scientists in lesser roles. It is through Brown, the dominant mentality, that these bacilli have gained control over Mars.
“The bacilli projected to Earth are intelligent enough, but they will only act under orders from their masters plotting inside Brown and the others. You understand? Brown, as the involuntary mouthpiece, will give orders to them. The things can fly through space from Earth once they have matured. They come to Mars to receive their orders,
then return to Earth.
“Now, the idea, as far as I can make out, is to retain all the scientists on Mars, make them serfs to follow out Martian orders of scientific progress, while the Earth will become a spawning ground for the new Martian bacillary race. That means that Earthmen will be eliminated as a useless, primitive form of life. That may come at any time!”
Despite himself, Sykes could not help but shudder at the diabolic scheme.
“The giant bacilli will destroy the human race by various means. For one thing, their mentalities are strong enough to cause less mentally equipped Earthmen to lose their reason. In physique they are somewhat hampered by their queer shape, but they can do an awful lot of burrowing and snipping.
“Look closely, and you’ll find that the rod-like ones—those able to fly through space—have pincer mandibles. With those pincers they can—and will!—cut all lines of communication, eat through buildings, slowly but surely bring down mankind’s every structure. It may take years, but it will succeed, and finally everything on Earth will be destroyed.
“All that will remain finally will be our planet, so altered atmospherically and gravitationally as to be another Mars. On Earth they can then pursue their aims, which were cut short when Mars’ air supply gave out. On Mars will remain the controlling faction—bacilli-dominated Earthmen with the necessary physical attributes to make instruments, weapons and so on.”
Eva’s voice, millions of miles distant, trembled audibly.
“Because of their eternal numbers, nothing can stop these bacilli from overrunning Earth! Howard, only one thing can possibly block them. Somehow, the master bacilli impregnating Dr. Brown and the others must be destroyed! I cannot do anything—I’m too well known as a possible revolutionary. I risk my life every time I radio to you.
“Howard, you must get to Mars somehow! As an outsider, and therefore, not included in the general census of workers which has been made on this planet, you might be able to do something. Now I must go—”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 58
