Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  As we stood at our posts, we saw the great degravitated bombs hurtled against our lines suddenly come into contact with the fan-like electric field, somersault a few times and fall. At the edge of the electric screen the ground was excavated to an enormous depth by the bursting of these intercepted degravitated bombs, most of which had been projected from stationary batteries three or four hundred miles behind the enemy lines. The local batteries bombarding with the old fashioned Sangsi steel shell were still effective. On the whole, however, from our own observation of the local front and from the television reports we were constantly receiving, we judged that the American and Allied Caucasian forces were more than holding their own.

  General Sanford, the Chief of the Signal Corps, who stood by my side, grasped my arm, and pointed to the west. Everyone crowded to our side in excitement. Before we could gasp our amazement, the incandescent spot which our Chief had mutely indicated on the distant horizon, zoomed in a blazing arc across our zenith and plunged into the terrain of the English forces which were occupying the little town of Ogallala about six miles to our south. We held our breath. What next?

  Only a faint throbbing seemed to pulse in the air above the spot where the missile sank. I was about to pronounce the diagnosis of "a dud," when someone cried, "My God, General, they've turned hell loose this time!" The whole atmosphere for a quarter of a mile radius about the fatal bomb quivered as over a heated griddle. Even as we remarked this, the area began to glow cherry red. A deafening thunder assaulted our ears when to our horror the earth on which had stood the now burning town of Ogallala, rose a gigantic incandescent ball and shot like a meteor into the heavens. Our car was a feather tossed in the ensuing hurricane, but even while we bobbed back and forth there was an ear-splitting explosion as the land that was once an American village burst into a blinding blue flare of hydrogen flame twenty-five miles above us.

  The swaying of the car gradually subsided in the tortured atmosphere, and a gentle rain began to fall. Ogallala had been chemically "stepped down" into the most primitive element, combined with the oxygen above and was condensing back to earth again as a few globules of H{2}O. That day was a sort of crisis; the enemy had discovered and turned upon us the power of atomic degeneration! And I, as assistant chief chemist of the American Army, felt my heart become heavy within me as I soared back to the Central Laboratory.

  * * * * *

  Even as I watched the advent of the electronic detonator two days previously the inspiration had come to me. What had happened to the doomed Nebraskan town had been so obvious. Through some unexplained agency discovered by the Orientals, the electronic restraint of the normally stable elements had been removed. In a brief time Ogallala had degenerated through all the steps of the periodic table until it became hydrogen, at which point, owing to the terrific air current and incandescent heat, it had recombined with the oxygen of the air as simple molecules of water.

  I thought I had a clue as to how it had been accomplished. The Central Chemical Laboratory was the focus of feverish excitement. The air was tense with the expectancy of tremendous things. Every scientist there felt that we were on the verge of discovering the principle of the Mongols' new weapon. "Give us time!" "Time" was the plea we sent daily to the Defense Headquarters. "Only six weeks more, only a month," we begged, "and then we'll make a boomerang out of the enemy's invention." Anderson, Mahaffey, Dr. Spritz--all the great physicists and chemists of the present age--labored at my side endeavoring to trick Nature into giving us that saving secret.

  The television 'phone called my name. I immediately hurried to the booth and saw General Loomis, the Commander-in-Chief of the American and Caucasian Armies, standing in his helicopter headquarters. He seemed haggard and worn. "How much longer, Johnson?" he asked. "The enemy has pretty well eaten out the country and with the advent of winter and lack of food, are bending all their efforts to crush us. Besides, we cannot tell just how long it will be before they begin turning out their new bomb in other than experimental quantities. Two weeks, I should estimate, is about all the longer I can hold them."

  "If that is the case, General Loomis," I replied, "we may as well give up. Two months will see us ready. But two weeks--!"

  I felt a hand laid on my shoulder. Dr. Rutledge, my science chief, had stepped into the booth behind me and overheard the conversation.

  "General Loomis," Dr. Rutledge spoke, looking for all the world like a patriarch of olden times, "until five minutes ago what Johnson has just said would have sealed our fate. But now, I think, I believe, we have one more card to play. I have only this moment completed a series of reactions which have resulted (as I calculated they should) in the production of a new protein, similar in appearance to flour. It should, although of course I have not yet had time to verify this statement, be a practical substitute for flour; and indeed, it is my belief that it will easily be mistaken for that substance. Its particles are laminated similar to starch, of an identical size, and the nutritive factor should be greater than that of bread. It is, in short, a new, a foreign protein never before found in this world of men!"

  "Very interesting, I am sure," replied General Loomis, with a trace of bitterness and sarcasm in his voice. "Your noble efforts will result in feeding the yellow devils an excellent artificial fare. They will be grateful, I know!"

  "Exactly my object, general," Dr. Rutledge replied. He continued impressively: "You have until now relied upon me largely in the waging of this war to save the white race from the menace of the yellow. Since all is lost at any rate, grant me one last effort in behalf of my country. At all costs, Loomis, hold your present lines for two days, preparing to suddenly retire to the west bank of the Mississippi. I leave it to your strategy to make a sudden retreat (which should extend over a period of at least ten days) appear as if enforced by the enemy themselves."

  "There should be no difficulty in that direction," General Loomis interpolated, smiling wryly on the television screen.

  "Once on the west bank," went on Dr. Rutledge seriously, not noticing the interjection, "make a stand for a day or two and then suddenly retreat across the river to the east bank as if again forced to do so. Now, General, two days from this time--before your retreat begins--I shall, I trust, have your armies all along the lines supplied with my new artificial, foreign protein flour. This you will leave in the enemy's hands, which, you have intimated, will be much to their delight. You will do the same at the stand which for a while you held on the west bank. But, mind you, let none of your men use any of this perfectly harmless food. I will personally see to it that you will receive it in such containers that none will come in contact with your persons."

  "Doctor," Loomis said after staring at the old scientist some time in astonishment, "except for years of personal acquaintance, I would say that you were suffering a mental shock. Knowing you as I do, however, I pray to God you're making no mistake this time. I'll do as you wish." His figure faded from the screen.

  The next fortnight was one of black despair. I myself doubted on occasions whether or not the old doctor was mentally accountable--even I who had trusted him so long. General Loomis and his staff called up daily to inquire if Dr. Rutledge had any change of plans. As for the army and the populace, they were one in calling on the President to make terms with the enemy. The allies truly were on the point of collapse. All that kept up what morale was left in the chemical division was the unrelenting demands made on us by Dr. Rutledge to continue to ferret out the electronic detonator. Until then, he had scarcely bothered with our work; now he would hear of nothing else. "Today's the Day!" was the slogan he had displayed above every bench.

  Finally the fatal day arrived. The retreat across the Mississippi was consummated. This time it was not feigned. The Mongols were hungry, and their appetites were whetted for more flour such as had sustained them for the past twelve days. Moreover, new electronic bombs were beginning to be supplied them.

  My name leapt at me across the room: I was being called by that almo
st human instrument, the television 'phone. Both my superior and I hurried to the cabinet. It was, as we had guessed, Loomis. "It's all up," he said wretchedly. "The fresh supply of atomic degenerating bombs, for which the enemy has been holding back, has now arrived. They matched and neutralized our electric field defense screen just an hour ago, leaving us at their mercy. You've had your chance, Doctor, and failed. I advise you both to make your way north and wait until these fiends forget the inconvenience you both have caused them. As for me, I'm leaving this instant to offer unconditional surrender in the name of all the allies."

  * * * * *

  It was about ten o'clock in the morning, just after he had transported all his forces hurriedly to the east bank, and as the Mongols were occupying the old entrenchments on the west, that General Loomis closed his conversation with the Chemical Laboratory. He turned to an aerial officer who stood at attention beside him. "Major Maniu," he said, "trail a white banner of truce on your plane and tell the enemy I will parley with them. Tell them that we will serve rations presently to our men who have worked all night without food or rest, and that if it is agreeable to them, both sides shall simultaneously discontinue activity at one o'clock. At that time I shall cross the river to offer them our terms of surrender."

  The officer saluted and hastened to his near-by plane. General Loomis ascended into his helicopter to confer with his staff to draw up in documentary form the surrender, and give the necessary orders relative to lowering of fire that afternoon. He also spoke to the President and to the crowd outside the White House, and then began nervously waiting the crucial moment. About twelve-thirty, however, a remarkable fact forced itself on his attention. Whereas the allied batteries continued to thunder away, the fire from the Orientals became irregular and sporadic. "Celebrating their victory beforehand," the French commander remarked bitterly to his chief. Loomis nodded. "And getting careless, too," another of the Staff added as he saw one of the enemy's detonator bombs disintegrate three or four hundred acres of a Mongolian base encampment fifty miles to the northwest and shoot it a monstrous blazing rocket twenty or thirty miles into the midday sky.

  By twelve forty-five the enemy's barrage had fallen completely all along the line. Our battery nevertheless continued until the set time but elicited no answer. Exactly at one General Loomis with two aides stepped into his air-car. He was a picture of grief and despair. Three minutes late the party landed forty miles across the river before the headquarters and armored dining hall of the Oriental General Staff.

  Loomis and his officers stepped out of their car and looked about. No one was in sight. Not even a sentry guarded the mess room door. The General paced back and forth a few minutes in indecision.

  "Evidently they mean to make us feel our defeat," he said. "They apparently do not even think it further necessary to observe rudimentary diplomatic courtesy. Come on, boys, beggars can't be choosers, as the antique saying goes." He led the way to the dining hall through a window of which a light was seen shining.

  "Perhaps if we find his xanthic highness after a good meal he will be inclined to be a bit more lenient," Loomis whispered with a forced laugh, trying to cheer his glum companions.

  He opened the unguarded door of the hall. An instant later he reeled back horror-stricken. Instead of a feasting gathering of officers attached to the Mongolian Staff he saw before a feast of men contorted in grotesque shapes by some violent death. Many lay beside the table, some on it, their faces blotched with great, unsightly wheals, their chests bloated until they seemed about to burst. Only one poor wretch had any life left in him--he lay exhausted on the floor with great streams of frothy mucous pouring from his nose and throat.

  A possibility dawned in Loomis' mind. He dashed away to search the other mess tents, shouting to his aides to follow suit. It was as he guessed: they had landed in a camp of dead and dying; stricken by some mysterious power. Hope suddenly surged back into his soul. He felt dizzy and faint. Could a similar fate have caused the unaccountable silence of the enemy's cannonade? Even as the thought came to him, he knew it must be so. His marvelous old friend, Dr. Rutledge, had risen to the need of the world and crushed the yellow menace.

  * * * * *

  Such, truly, had been the case. In a single hour, through the agency of a harmless food, the subtle scientist had crushed a nation. The principle involved had been discovered nearly two centuries before, when it was well-known that if an animal were injected with a small quantity of a protein foreign to his body, a subsequent dose a hundred million times as weak would cause its immediate and violent death. Even the quantity that might be flying in the atmosphere and become dissolved in the fluids of the nose or eyes would act as the most virulent of known poisons. Through the ages, however, the human race had more or less come in contact with all the proteins in their world and hence rarely became highly sensitized to any protein occurring in nature. The terrible toxicity of a protein which had never before occurred in nature and to whose power mankind had never been even partially desensitized had up to the time of Dr. Rutledge only entered the minds of a few scientists. His strategy was the working out of a new maxim: Nature is terrible, but man makes it more so.

  * * * * *

  Foreign protein sensitization or anaphylaxis was the basis of Dr. Rutledge's coup. The laws governing this reaction had been more or less worked out by a group of scientists in the twentieth century. They had demonstrated that if a guinea-pig or rabbit were injected with the blood serum of another species, a subsequent dose of an infinitely small quantity of this substance would cause convulsions, collapse and rapid death. Inasmuch as there were many proteins in the atmosphere at that time due to the unrestrained pollination of plants of every description, it was not surprising that they found as many as ten per cent of the white race afflicted with a slight pollen sensitivity which showed up seasonally by causing spasms of the smooth muscle of the respiratory system, a disease popularly called "hay-fever."

  Since, however, the proteins of the world had always been present, the human race had, by constantly coming into contact with them, become more or less immunized to the majority. Only occasionally a case of violent sensitivity came to light and was recognized as such. Two or three cases there had been which the old scientist discovered while searching the archives of ancient medicine and these gave him the clew he needed.

  One was the case of a little girl who had somehow or other become sensitized to the protein of wasp toxin and who suffered almost immediate death from anaphylactic "choc" as the result of being stung by that insect. A second instance concerned a woman who went into violent asthmatic paroxysms if a mouse entered the room where she was, and whose skin broke out into large wheals if touched with mouse hair. Finally, and most outstanding in his mind, was the case of a child who was thought to be sensitive to the fish protein in glue and who died almost immediately when the physician testing her had brought a small quantity of the dry protein into contact with a scratch on her arm.

  These had, however, been rare cases, but they pointed out the method. It had already been proved over and over again that animals could be sensitized experimentally by treating them with foreign proteins, provided that after the initial dose they did not come into contact with the same protein until after a lapse of about two weeks. If they happened to do so the first injection or treatment was frequently neutralized and failed to give the desired sensitivity.

  With the discovery of a new, highly pure and synthetic protein by Dr. Rutledge the situation with the enemy could be put on a close parallel with the laboratory condition. The enemy could be fed the protein when they were in need of food and had little else, but since it was synthetic, they could not get a second supply until the Doctor was able to put the fatal meal in their way.

  * * *

  Contents

  A VISIT TO THE MOON

  By George Griffith

  INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

  The adventures of Rollo Lenox Smeaton Aubrey, Earl of Redgrave, and his bride Lilla
Zaidie, daughter of the late Professor Hartley Rennick, Demonstrator in Physical Science in the Smith-Oliver University in New York, were first made possible by that distinguished scientist's now famous separation of the Forces of Nature into their positive and negative elements. Starting from the axiom that everything in Nature has its opposite, he not only divided the Universal Force of Gravitation into its elements of attraction and repulsion, but also constructed a machine which enabled him to develop either or both of these elements at will. From this triumph of mechanical genius it was but a step to the magnificent conception which was subsequently realised by Lord Redgrave in the Astronef. Lord Redgrave had met Professor Rennick, about a year before his lamented death, when he was on a holiday excursion in the Canadian Rockies with his daughter. The young millionaire nobleman was equally fascinated by the daring theories of the Professor, and by the mental and physical charms of Miss Zaidie. And thus the chance acquaintance resulted in a partnership, in which the Professor was to find the knowledge and Lord Redgrave the capital for translating the theory of the "R. Force" (Repulsive or Antigravitational Force) into practice, and constructing a vessel which would be capable, not only of rising from the earth, but of passing the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere, and navigating with precision and safety the limitless ocean of Space.

  Unhappily, before the Astronef, or star-navigator, was completed at the works which Lord Redgrave had built for her construction on his estate at Smeaton, in Yorkshire, her inventor succumbed to pulmonary complications following an attack of influenza. This left Lord Redgrave the sole possessor of the secret of the "R. Force." A year after the Professor's death, he completed the Astronef, and took her across the Atlantic by rising into Space until the attraction of the earth was so far weakened that in a couple of hours' time he was able to descend in the vicinity of New York. On this trial trip he was accompanied by Andrew Murgatroyd, an old engineer who had superintended the building of the Astronef. This man's family had been attached to his lordship's for generations and for this reason he was selected as engineer and steersman of the Navigator of the Stars.