(3/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume III: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "Whew!" gasped Carter as waves of dazing heat rose about him. "Boy, but it's hot! I can't stand much of this. Better get out while the getting's good."

  But he clenched his teeth, and dove on down to see what those fiery demons looked like. Funny they didn't make any effort to attack. Surely they must see him now.

  "Take that, my beauties!--and that!" he gasped, pressing the trigger of his camera furiously.

  Then, at a scant two thousand feet, he levelled off, his wings blistering with the heat, and zoomed up again--when to his horror, his engine faltered; died.

  * * * * *

  In that agonizing moment it came to Jim that this perhaps was why neither the Television News nor the War Department pilots had been able to get pictures of the hell below.

  Had something about that daring heat killed their motors, too, as it had his? Had they plunged like fluttering, sizzling moths into that inferno of orange flame?

  "Well, I guess it's curtains!" he muttered.

  A glance at his altimeter showed a scant eighteen hundred now. Another glance showed the western boundary of the city, agonizing miles ahead. Could he make it? He'd try, anyway!

  So, nursing his plane along in a shallow glide, Jim slipped down through that dazing heat.

  "Got to keep her speed up!" he told himself, half deliriously, as he steadily lost altitude. "Can't pancake here, or I'll be a flapjack!"

  At an altitude of less than a thousand he levelled off again, eased on down, fully expecting to feel his plane burst into flames. But though his eyebrows crisped and the gas must have boiled, the sturdy little plane made it.

  On a long last glide, he put her wheels down on the sandy desert floor, a bare half mile beyond that searing hell.

  The heat was still terrific but endurable now. He dared breathe deeper; he found his head clearing. But what was the good of it? It was only a respite. The monsters had seen him, all right--no doubt about that! Already they were swooping out of their weird citadel like a pack of furious hornets.

  On they came, incredibly fast, moving in a wide half-circle that obviously was planned to envelop him.

  Tense with horror, like a doomed man at the stake, Jim watched the flaming phalanx advance. And now he saw what they really were; saw that his first, fantastic guess had been right.

  They were ants--or at least more like ants than anything on earth--great fiery termites ten feet long, hideous mandibles snapping like steel, hot from the forge, their huge compound eyes burning like greenish electric fire in their livid orange sockets.

  And another thing Jim saw, something that explained why the fearful insects had not flown up to attack him in the air. Their wings were gone!

  They had molted, were earthbound now.

  * * * * *

  There was much food for thought in this, but no time to think. Already the creatures were almost on him.

  Jim turned his gaze from them and bent over his dials in a last frantic effort to get his motor started. The instinct of self-preservation was dominant now--and to his joy, suddenly the powerful little engine began to hum with life.

  He drew one deep breath of infinite relief, then gave her the gun and whirled off down the desert floor, the enraged horde after him.

  For agonizing instants it was a nip-and-tuck race. Then as he felt his wheels lift, he pulled hard back on his stick, and swept up and away from the deadly claws that clutched after him in vain.

  Climbing swiftly, Jim banked once, swept back, put the bead full on that scattering half-circle of fiery termites, and pressed the trigger of his automatic camera.

  "There, babies!" he laughed grimly. "You're in the Rogues' Gallery now!"

  Then, swinging off to the northeast, he continued to climb, giving that weird ant-hill a wide berth.

  Funny, about those things losing their wings, he was thinking now. Would they grow them again, or were they on the ground for good? And what was their game out there in the desert, anyway?

  Questions Jim couldn't answer, of course. Only time would tell. Meanwhile, he had some pictures that would make the Old Man sit up and take notice, not to mention the War Department.

  "They'd better get the Army on the job before those babies get air-minded again!" he told himself, as he winged on into the rising sun. "Otherwise the show they've already staged may be only a little curtain-raiser."

  * * * * *

  Jim's arrival in the city room of The New York Press that afternoon was a triumphant one, for he had radio-phoned the story ahead and extras were out all over the metropolitan area, with relays flashing from the front pages of papers everywhere.

  No sooner had he turned over his precious pictures to the photographic department for development than Overton rushed him to a microphone, and made him repeat his experience for the television screen.

  But the city editor's enthusiasm died when the negatives came out of the developer.

  "There are your pictures!" he said, handing over a bunch of them.

  Carter looked at them in dismay. They were all blank--just so much plain black celluloid.

  "Over-exposed!" rasped Overton. "A hell of a photographer you are!"

  "I sure am!" Jim agreed, still gazing ruefully at the ruined negatives. "Funny, though. The camera was checked before I started. I had the range before I pulled the trigger, every shot." He paused, then added, as though reluctant to excuse himself: "It must have been the heat."

  "Yeah. I suppose so! Well, that was damn expensive heat for you, my lad. It cost you ten thousand bucks."

  "Yes, but--"

  Jim had been going to say it had nearly cost him his life but thought better of it. Besides, an idea had come.

  "Give me those negatives!" he said, "I'm going to find out what's wrong with 'em."

  And since they were of no use to Overton, he gave them to Jim.

  * * * * *

  That night again, Jim Carter presented himself at the Wentworth home in Hartford, and again it was Joan who admitted him.

  "Oh, Jimmy!" she murmured, as he took her in his arms. "We're all so proud of you!"

  "I'm glad someone is," he said.

  "But what a fearful risk you ran! If you hadn't been able to get your motor started--"

  "Why think of unpleasant things?" he said with a smile.

  Then they went into the library, where Professor Wentworth added his congratulations.

  "But I'm afraid I didn't accomplish much," said Jim, explaining about the pictures.

  "Let me see them," said the professor.

  Jim handed them over.

  For a moment or two Professor Wentworth examined them intently, holding them this way and that.

  "They indeed appear to be extremely over-exposed," he admitted at length. "Your Fire Ants are doubtless radio-active to a high degree. The results could not have been much worse had you tried to photograph the sun direct."

  "I thought as much," said Carter, gloomily.

  "But possibly the damage isn't irreparable. Suppose we try re-developing a few of these negatives."

  He led the way to his study, which since the destruction of the observatory had been converted into a temporary laboratory.

  * * * * *

  Ten minutes later, Professor Wentworth had his re-developing bath ready in a porcelain basin and had plunged some of the negatives into it.

  "This process is what photographers call intensification," he explained. "It consists chemically in the oxidation of a part of the silver of which the image is composed. I have here in solution uranium nitrate, plus potassium ferricyanide acidified with acetic acid. The latter salt, in the presence of the acid, is an oxidizing agent, and, when applied to the image, produces silver oxide, which with the excess of acetic acid forms silver acetate."

  "Which is all so much Greek to me!" said Carter.

  "At the same time, the ferricyanide is reduced to ferrocyanide," the professor went on, with a smile at Joan, "whereupon insoluble red uranium ferrocyanide is produced, and, while some of the silver, i
n being oxidized by this process, is rendered soluble and removed from the negative into the solution, it is replaced by the highly non-actinic and insoluble uranium compound."

  The process was one quite familiar to photographers experienced in astronomical work, he explained. In fifteen minutes they should know what results they were getting.

  But when fifteen minutes passed and the negatives were still as black as ever, Jim's hope waned.

  Not so Professor Wentworth's, however.

  "There is a definite but slow reaction taking place," he said after a careful examination. "Either the over-exposure is even greater than I had suspected, or the actinic rays from your interesting subjects have formed a stubborn chemical union with the silver of the image. In the latter event, which is the theory I am going to work on, we must speed up the reaction and tear some of that excess silver off, if we're ever to see what is underneath."

  "But how are you going to speed up the reaction?" asked Jim. "I thought that uranium was pretty strong stuff by itself."

  "It is, but not as strong as this new substance we have in combination with the silver here. So I think I'll try a little electrolysis--or, in plain English, electro-plating."

  As he spoke, the professor clipped a couple of platinum electrodes to the basin, one at each end. To the anode he attached one of the negatives, to the cathode a small piece of iron.

  "Now then, we'll soon see."

  He passed a low current into the wires, through a rheostat, with startling results. There was a sudden foaming of the solution and a weird vapor rose from it, luminous, milky, faintly orange.

  * * * * *

  For a moment, all they could do was stare.

  Then Professor Wentworth switched off the current and stepped toward the tank. Waving away that orange gas, he reached for the cathode and held it up. It was no longer iron, but silver, now.

  "Plated, you see!" he exclaimed in triumph.

  "Yes, but those fumes!" cried Jim. "Why, they were the same color as the--the Fire Ants, as you call them."

  "I know." The professor was not as calm as he pretended. "We have released some of their actinic rays captured by the negative, in prying loose our excess silver. Later I shall repeat the process and capture some of that vapor for analysis. At present, let us have a look at the negative already treated."

  He lifted the anode from the solution now, removed the negative, and held it up. A smile of satisfaction broke over his face, followed by a shudder.

  "There you are, Jim! Have a look!"

  Jim looked, with Joan peering over his shoulder, and his pulses tingled. It was a clear shot of that scattering half-circle of fiery termites, taken after he got away and swept back over them.

  "Say, that's wonderful!" he exclaimed.

  "Wonderful--but horrible!" echoed Joan.

  "I'll admit they're not much on looks," laughed Carter. "But their homely maps are worth a lot to me--ten thousand dollars, in fact!"

  He told her why, and what he proposed to do with the money, and Joan thought it a very good idea.

  While this was taking place, Professor Wentworth was re-developing the rest of the negatives.

  At last all had been salvaged, even those taken in the terrific heat over that weird glass city out there, and Jim was preparing to bear them back to Overton in triumph.

  He had thanked the kindly professor from the bottom of his heart, had even told him something of what he had been telling Joan. There remained but to put one last question, then go.

  "Summing it all up, what do you make of those nightmares?" he asked. "Do you think they can be destroyed?"

  Professor Wentworth did not reply at once.

  "I can perhaps answer your question better when I have analyzed this specimen of gas," he said at length, holding up a test-tube in which swirled a quantity of that luminous, milky orange vapor. "But if you wish to quote me for publication, you may say that when I have learned the nature of it, I shall devote all my energies to combating the menace it constitutes."

  And that was the message Jim took back with him, but it was the pictures that interested the practical Overton most.

  * * * * *

  Before many days, however, Overton, with the rest of the world, was turning anxiously to Professor Wentworth, watching his every move, awaiting his every word. For before many days terrible reports started coming in, not only from the Arizona desert but from the assembly grounds of the Fire Ants everywhere.

  Those deadly termites were on the move! They were spreading from their central citadels in ominous, expanding circles--circles that engulfed villages, towns and cities in a swift, relentless ring of annihilation that was fairly stupefying.

  In North America, the cities of Phoenix, Tucson and Prescott, with all that lay between, were already gone, their frantic populaces fleeing to the four points of the compass before that fateful orange tide. In South America, Rosario and Cordoba were within the flaming ring and Buenos Aires was threatened. In Europe, Moscow and its vast tributary plain had fallen before the invaders. In Asia, a veritable inland empire was theirs, reaching from Urga to the Khingan Mountains. In Africa, Southern Algeria and French Sudan, with their innumerable small villages and oases, were overrun. In Australia, Coolgardie had succumbed and Perth was in a panic.

  But fearful though the destruction was on the continents, it was the islands of the world that suffered most. First the smallest, those picturesque green gems of the South Seas, crisped and perished. Then came reports of the doom of the Hawaiian group, the Philippines, the East and West Indies, New Zealand, Tasmania and a score of others, their populations perishing by the thousands, as shipping proved unavailable to transport them to safety.

  By far the most tragic fate, however, was that suffered by the British Isles. What happened there stunned the world, and brought realization to humanity that unless some miracle intervened, it was but a mirror of the doom that awaited all. For England, Ireland and Scotland were habitable no more. London, Dublin, Glasgow--all their proud cities, all their peaceful hamlets, centuries old, were flaming ruins.

  Out of a population, of some sixty millions, it was estimated that at least eight millions must have perished. The rest, by prodigious feats of transportation, managed to reach the mainland, where they spread as refugees throughout an apprehensive, demoralized Europe.

  * * * * *

  As for the armies and navies of the world, they were powerless before this fiendish invader. Hammered with high explosives, drenched with chemicals, sprayed with machine-gun ballets, the fiery termites surged on unchecked, in ever-widening circles of death.

  Lead and steel passed through them harmlessly. Gas wafted off them like air. Despite the frantic efforts of scientists and military men, nothing could be devised to stem that all-devouring orange tide.

  It was quite obvious by now, even to the most conservative minds, that the end of human life on earth was not far off. It could only be a few more weeks before the last stronghold fell. Daily, hourly, those deadly Fire Ants were everywhere expanding their fields of operations. Presently all humanity would be driven to the seacoasts, there to perish by fire or water, as they chose.

  There were some optimists, of course, who believed that the miracle would happen--that Professor Wentworth or some other scientist would devise some means of repelling the invader before it was too late.

  Young Jim Carter of The York Press was not among them, however, though he would have gambled it would be Professor Wentworth if anyone. For what hope was there that any mere man could figure out a weapon that would be effective against such a deadly, such a superhuman foe?

  Very little, it seemed, and he grew less and less sanguine, as he continued his frenzied, sleepless work of reporting the unending catastrophes for his paper.

  He often thought bitterly of that ten thousand dollars. A lot of good that would do him now!

  As for Joan, she faced her fate with fortitude--fortitude and a supreme faith that her father would succeed in analyzing
that sinister orange vapor and find the weapon the world waited for.

  But agonizing days passed and he did not find it.

  Then at last, on the night of August 14th, when Los Angeles and San Francisco were smoldering infernos, along with Reno, Denver, Omaha, El Paso and a score of other great American cities; when Buenos Aires and Santiago were gone, Berlin and Peking and Cairo; when Australia was all one fiery hell--then it was that Professor Wentworth summoned Jim Carter to Hartford.

  * * * * *

  Hoping against hope, he hurried over.

  Once again, Joan ushered him into the house. She was very pale and did not speak.

  At her side stood her father. It was he who spoke.

  "Good evening, Jim. You have come promptly."

  His voice was strained, his face grave. He had aged greatly in the past few weeks.

  "Well I'll admit I clipped along. You've--found something?"

  Professor Wentworth smiled wanly.

  "Suppose you step into my study and see what I have found."

  He led the way toward the little makeshift laboratory that for many days and nights had been the scene of his efforts.

  It was littered with strange devices now, strangest of all perhaps a huge glass tube like a cannon, mounted on some sort of swivel base.

  Ignoring this for the moment, he turned to a smaller tube set upright on a table at the far end of the room. In it, glowed a sinister orange lump that made the whole tube fluorescent.

  "Behold one of your monsters in captivity!" said the professor, again with a wan smile. "In miniature, of course. What I have done is to condense some of that vapor into a solid."

  The process, he explained, was similar to that employed by Madame Curie in obtaining metallic radium--electrolyzing a radium chloride solution with mercury as a cathode, then driving off the mercury by heat in a current of hydrogen--only he had used the new element instead of radium.

  "Incidentally, I have learned that this new element is far more radioactive than radium and possesses many curious properties. Among them, it decomposes violently in water--particularly salt water--producing harmless hydrogen and chloride compounds. So we have nothing to fear from those seeds that fell in our oceans, lakes and rivers."