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

by Various

  * * * * *

  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, in 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."

  "Well, that's something, anyway," said Jim. "But have you found any way to combat the ones that have already hatched?"

  "Before I answer that question," Professor Wentworth replied, "I shall let you witness a little demonstration."

  He advanced to the cannon-like device at the other end of the room, swung it on its swivel till it was pointing directly at that fluorescent orange tube on the table.

  "Watch closely!" he said, throwing a switch.

  There was a sudden, whining hum in the air and the nib of the big tube glowed a soft, velvety green. Jim gazed at the scene with rapt attention.

  "Don't look at that one!" whispered Joan. "Look at the other!"

  Jim did so, and saw that its fluorescence was waning.

  A moment more the professor held the current on, while the tube grew white. Then he threw off the switch.

  "Now let us have a look at our captive," he said, striding over.

  They followed, and one glance told Jim what had happened. That sinister lump of orange metal had vanished.

  * * * * *

  But where was it? That was what he wanted to know.

  "A natural question, but not one easy to answer," was Professor Wentworth's reply. "I shall tell you what I have done; then you may judge for yourself."

  The cannon-like device which had accompanied the seeming miracle was an adaptation of the cathode tube, whose rays are identical with the beta rays of the atom and consist of a stream of negatively charged particles moving at the velocity of light--186,000 miles a second. These rays, in theory, have the power to combine with the positively charged alpha rays of the atom and drag them from their electrons, causing them to discharge their full quanta of energy at once, in the form of complete disintegration--and it was this theory the professor had acted on.

  "But, good Lord--that's splitting the atom!" exclaimed Jim. "You don't mean to say you've done that?"

  "I apparently have," was the grave admission. "But do not let it seem such a miracle. Bear in mind, as I have pointed out before, that nature has accomplished this alchemy many times. All radio-active elements are evidences of it. The feat consists merely in altering the valence of the atom, changing its electric charge, in other words. What I have done in the present instance is merely to speed up a process nature already had under way, inasmuch as we are dealing with a radio-active substance."

  "But what has happened to the by-product of the reaction?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine. I have not had time to study that phase of it. Heat, mainly, was produced. Possibly a few atoms of helium. But the substance is gone. That is our chief concern just now."

  It was only after abandoning chemical means and turning to physics that he had met with success, he said. Cathode rays had finally proved the key to the riddle.

  "But do you think this thing will work on a big scale?" asked Jim regarding that fragile tube doubtfully.

  Professor Wentworth hesitated before replying.

  "I do not know," he admitted, "but I intend to find out--to-night."

  * * * * *

  Jim looked at him in amazement. "To-night?"

  "Yes. Or rather, the experiment will be at dawn. If successful, this continent at least will be rid of the menace."

  Jim's amazement turned to incredulity and a sudden fear gripped him. Had the strain of the past few weeks unbalanced the professor's mind?

  "But surely you can't hope to wipe them out with one tube. Why, it would take hundreds."

  "No, only one. You see, I am going to place the tube in the center of the circle and direct its rays outward toward the circumference in a swinging radius."

  Whereupon, for a moment, Jim's fear seemed confirmed.

  "But, good God!" he exclaimed. "It couldn't possibly be that powerful, could it?"

  "I think it can be made to be," was Professor Wentworth's grave assurance. "The greatest power we know in the universe is radiant energy, which reaches us from the sun and the stars, traveling at the speed of light."

  "Like light rays, these heat rays can be focused, directed; and the beta rays of the cathode, traveling at the same velocity, can be made to ride these rays of radiant heat much as electric power rides radio waves. The giant, in short, can be made, to carry the dwarf, with his deadly little weapon. That, at least, is the theory I am acting on."

  This somewhat allayed Jim's fears--fears that vanished when the professor went on to explain somewhat the working of his mechanism.

  "But how are you going to get the thing out there?" he asked, picturing with a shudder the center of the flaming hell.

  "I imagine the War Department will provide me with a volunteer plane and pilot for the purpose," was the calm reply.

  "And you will go?"

  "Yes, I will go."

  Jim debated, but not for long.

  "Well, you needn't trouble the War Department. Here's your volunteer pilot! The plane's outside. W
hen do we start?"

  "But, my dear young man!" objected the professor. "I cannot permit you to make this sacrifice. It is suicide, sheer suicide."

  "Is my life any more precious than yours, or that of some volunteer Army pilot?" Jim asked him.

  "But there is Joan. If I fail--she must depend on you."

  "If you fail, Professor, Joan won't need me or anyone, for long. No, I go. So let's chuck the argument and get ready."

  "Oh, Jimmy!" sobbed Joan. "Jimmy!"

  But her eyes, as they met his mistily, were lit with a proud splendor.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, Jim Carter's little auto-plane lifted into the night, and, with that precious tube mounted above the cabin, winged swiftly westward.

  As on his former foray into that fiery realm, Jimmy timed his flight to arrive over the eastern edge of the Arizona desert just before dawn. Somewhere in that great sandy waste, they felt, there would be a place to set the plane down and get the ray going.

  Professor Wentworth had broadcast the particulars of his tube to his scientific colleagues wherever humanity still remained, and the eyes of the world were on this flight. If successful, swift planes would bear similar tubes to the centers of the devastated regions elsewhere, and sweep outward with their deadly rays. The earth would be rid of this fiery invader. If it were not successful....

  Jim preferred not to think of that, as he drove on into the night.

  Crossing the Missouri River at dark and deserted Kansas City, they soon saw the eastern arc of that deadly orange circle loom on the horizon. To get over it safely, Jim rose to twenty thousand feet, but even there the heat, as they sped across the frontier into enemy territory, was terrific.

  Anxiously he watched his revs and prayed for his motor to hold up. If it stopped now, they were cooked!

  The sturdy engine purred on with scarcely a flutter, however, and soon they were behind the lines, in a region pitted with the smoldering fires of towns and cities.

  It made them shudder, it presented such an appalling panorama of ruin. But at the same time, it strengthened their hope. For very few flares of orange gleamed now among the red. The main forces of the invader were at the front. That meant there should be a safe place to land somewhere.