(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  Too late ... too late ...

  Because unless he could somehow save Jo-Anne, he would never predict the weather again--for anyone.

  * * * * *

  "But what you ask is impossible!" the Secretary of Defense said a few days later.

  "If I come back, if I'm successful," Johnny said quietly, "I'm your man, for as long as you want me, without pay."

  "You mean that?" the Secretary asked slowly.

  "I mean it."

  The Secretary nodded grimly, touched a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut the connection, turned to Johnny:

  "You leave this afternoon, Sloman. You realize, of course, there isn't a thing we can do to get you out. Not a thing."

  "Yes," said Johnny.

  "You're a very brave man, or very much in love."

  Hours later, the jet transport took off with Johnny in it.

  He came down near what had been the border of the motherland and Poland. He began to walk. A farmer and his son spotted the parachute, came after him. The son was a Red Army man on leave. The son had a gun. He fired prematurely, and Johnny ran. It was hopeless, he decided. He would never make it. He would never even reach the capital alive, where they were holding Jo-Anne.

  He ran.

  He wished for rain. A blinding rainstorm. The clouds scudded in. The rain fell in buckets. The farmer and his son soon lost sight of Johnny.

  Just to make sure, Johnny ran and let it go on raining.

  * * * * *

  "Floods in their motherland," the Secretary of Defense told the President. "Naturally, their news broadcasts are trying to keep the reports to a minimum, but these are the biggest floods we've ever heard of over there."

  "Our man is there?" the President asked.

  "He was dropped by parachute, sir!"

  * * * * *

  It was snowing when Johnny reached the capital. He had been parachuted into the enemy's motherland, naturally, because propinquity alone assured the success of his strange talent.

  He was tired. His feet ached. He'd been the only one heading for the capital. Hundreds of thousands had been fleeing from the floods ...

  "There he is!" a voice cried in the enemy language. He didn't understand the language, but he understood the tone. His picture had been flashed across the length and breadth of the motherland. He had been spotted.

  He ran. Down an alley, across a muddy yard, floundering to his knees, then his thighs, in thick mud. They came floundering in pursuit. They fired a warning volley of shots. He stumbled and fell face down in the black, stinking mud.

  They took him ...

  * * * * *

  Dark room. One light, on his face. A voice: "We can kill you."

  "Kill me," he said. "My last wish will be for rain. Rain, forever."

  "We can torture you."

  "And I will say, before you start, let it rain and go on raining. Let me be powerless to prevent it. Rain!"

  "We can kill the girl."

  "Your country will float away."

  A fist came at him out of the darkness. Hit him. It was tentative torture. He sobbed and thought: rain, harder. Rain, rain, rain ...

  Water seeped into the dungeon. This had never happened before. The fist went away.

  Outside it rained and rained.

  * * * * *

  "What does he want, comrade?"

  "We don't know, comrade."

  "Give it to him--whatever it is. He has disrupted our entire economy. We face economic disaster unless he--and his rain--leave us in peace."

  "Perhaps that is what he wants. Peace."

  "You fool! We are supposed to want peace. Shut up!"

  "Yes, sir. Comrade."

  "Better ask the party secretary."

  "Yes, comrade."

  The party secretary was asked. The party secretary sighed and nodded.

  Johnny saw the light of day. And Jo-Anne.

  * * * * *

  A month later, the Secretary of Defense told him. "Thanks to you, they agreed to a German settlement, stopped sending arms to their Red ally in Asia, withdrew their promise of aid to the Arab fanatics, and have freed all foreigners held in their motherland illegally."

  Johnny listened, smiling at Jo-Anne. They had been married two weeks. Naturally, the enemy had been only too glad to see them leave.

  "Just stay available, Sloman," the President beamed from alongside the Secretary of Defense. "As long as they know we can always send you over there again, they'll never try anything. Right?"

  "Yes, sir," said Johnny.

  They called him the Weather Man. They went on calling him the Weather Man, although he retired more or less--except during cases of dire emergency.

  The world called him that, the Weather Man. And, because he had retired to enjoy life with his new wife, they began to suspect, as could be expected, that he had been a fraud.

  But the enemy did not think so. Ever again.

  And that was enough for Johnny.

  THE END

  * * *

  Contents

  THE ATTACK FROM SPACE

  By Captain S. P. Meek

  "No one knows what unrevealed horrors space holds and the world will never rest entirely easy until the slow process of time again heals the protective layer."--From "Beyond the Heaviside Layer."

  Over a year has passed since I wrote those lines. When they were written the hole which Jim Carpenter had burned with his battery of infra-red lamps through the heaviside layer, that hollow sphere of invisible semi-plastic organic matter which encloses the world as a nutshell does a kernel, was gradually filling in as he had predicted it would: every one thought that in another ten years the world would be safely enclosed again in its protective layer as it had been since the dawn of time. There were some adventurous spirits who deplored this fact, as it would effectually bar interplanetary travel, for Hadley had proved with his life that no space flyer could force its way through the fifty miles of almost solid material which barred the road to space, but they were in the minority. Most of humanity felt that it would rather be protected against the denizens of space than to have a road open for them to travel to the moon if they felt inclined.

  To be sure, during the five years that the hole had been open, nothing more dangerous to the peace and well-being of the world had appeared from space than a few hundreds of the purple amoeba which we had found so numerous on the outer side of the layer, when we had traveled in a Hadley space ship up through the hole into the outer realms of space, and one lone specimen of the green dragons which we had also encountered. The amoeba had been readily destroyed by the disintegrating rays of the guarding space-ships which were stationed inside the layer at the edge of the hole and the lone dragon had fallen a ready victim to the machine-gun bullets which had been poured into it. At first the press had damned Jim Carpenter for opening the road for these horrors, but once their harmlessness had been clearly established, the row had died down and the appearance of an amoeba did not merit over a squib on the inside pages of the daily papers.

  * * * * *

  While the hole in the heaviside layer was no longer news for the daily press, a bitter controversy still waged in the scientific journals as to the reason why no observer on earth, even when using the most powerful telescopes, could see the amoeba before they entered the hole, and then only when their telescopes were set up directly under the hole. When a telescope of even small power was mounted in the grounds back of Carpenter's laboratory, the amoeba could be detected as soon as they entered the hole, or when they passed above it through space; but, aside from that point of vantage, they were entirely invisible.

  Carpenter's theory of the absorptive powers of the material of which the heaviside layer was composed was lau
ghed to scorn by most scientists, who pointed out the fact that the sun, moon and stars could be readily seen through it. Carpenter replied that the rays of colored or visible light could only pass through the layer when superimposed upon a carrier wave of ultra-violet or invisible light. He stated dogmatically that the amoeba and the other denizens of space absorbed all the ultra-violet light which fell on them and reflected only the visible rays which could not pass through the heaviside layer because of the lack of a synchronized carrier wave of shorter wave-length.

  Despetier replied at great length and showed by apparently unimpeachable mathematics that Carpenter was entirely wrong and that his statements showed an absolute lack of knowledge of the most elementary and fundamental laws of light transmission. Carpenter replied briefly that he could prove by mathematics that two was equal to one and he challenged Despetier or anyone else to satisfactorily explain the observed facts in any other way. While they vainly tried to do so, Carpenter lapsed into silence in his Los Angeles laboratory and delved ever deeper into the problems of science. Such was the situation when the attack came from space.

  My first knowledge of the attack came when McQuarrie, the city editor of the San Francisco Clarion, sent for me. When I entered his office he tossed a Los Angeles dispatch on the desk before me and with a growl ordered me to read it. It told of the unexplained disappearance of an eleven year old boy the night before. It looked like a common kidnapping.

  "Well?" I asked as I handed him back the dispatch.

  With another growl he tossed down a second telegram. I read it with astonishment, for it told of a second disappearance which had happened about an hour after the first. The similarity of the two cases was at once apparent.

  "Coincidence or connection?" I asked as I returned it.

  "Find out!" he replied. "If I knew which it was I wouldn't be wasting the paper's money by sending you to Los Angeles. I don't doubt that I am wasting it anyway, but as long as I am forced to keep you on as a reporter, I might as well try to make you earn the money the owner wastes on paying you a salary, even although I know it to be a hopeless task. Go on down there and see what you can find out, if anything."

  I jotted down in my notebook the names and addresses of the missing children and turned to leave. A boy entered and handed McQuarrie a yellow slip. He glanced at it and called me back.

  "Wait a minute, Bond," he said as he handed me the dispatch. "I doubt but you'd better fly down to Los Angeles. Another case has just been reported."

  I hastily copied down the dispatch he handed me, which was almost a duplicate of the first two with the exception of the time and the name. Three unexplained disappearances in one day was enough to warrant speed; I drew some expense money and was on my way south in a chartered plane within an hour.

  On my arrival I went to the Associated Press office and found a message waiting for me, directing me to call McQuarrie on the telephone at once.

  "Hello, Bond," came his voice over the wire, "have you just arrived? Well, forget all about that disappearance case. Prince is on his way to Los Angeles to cover it. You hadn't been gone an hour before a wire came in from Jim Carpenter. He says, 'Send Bond to me at once by fastest conveyance. Chance for a scoop on the biggest story of the century.' I don't know what it's about, but Jim Carpenter is always front page news. Get in touch with him at once and stay with him until you have the story. Don't risk trying to telegraph it when you get it--telephone. Get moving!"

  I lost no time in getting Carpenter on the wire.

  "Hello, First Mortgage," he greeted me. "You made good time getting down here. Where are you?"

  "At the A. P. Office."

  "Grab a taxi and come out to the laboratory. Bring your grip with you: you may have to stay over night."

  "I'll be right out, Jim. What's the story?"

  His voice suddenly grew grave.

  "It's the biggest thing you ever handled," he replied. "The fate of the whole world may hang on it. I don't want to talk over the phone; come on out and I'll give you the whole thing."

  * * * * *

  An hour later I shook hands with Tim, the guard at the gate of the Carpenter laboratory, and passed through the grounds to enter Jim's private office. He greeted me warmly and for a few minutes we chatted of old times when I worked with him as an assistant in his atomic disintegration laboratory and of the stirring events we had passed through together when we had ventured outside the heaviside layer in his space ship.

  "Those were stirring times," he said, "but I have an idea, First Mortgage, that they were merely a Sunday school picnic compared to what we are about to tackle."

  "I guessed that you had something pretty big up your sleeve from your message." I replied. "What's up now? Are we going to make a trip to the moon and interview the inhabitants?"

  "We may interview them without going that far," he said. "Have you seen a morning paper?"

  "No."

  "Look at this."

  He handed me a copy of the Gazette. Streamer headlines told of the three disappearances which I had come to Los Angeles to cover, but they had grown to five during the time I had been flying down. I looked at Jim in surprise.

  "We got word of that in San Francisco," I told him, "and I came down here to cover the story. When I got here, McQuarrie telephoned me your message and told me to come and see you instead. Has your message anything to do with this?"

  "It has everything to do with it, First Mortgage; in fact, it is it. Have you any preconceived ideas on the disappearance epidemic?"

  "None at all."

  "All the better--you'll be able to approach the matter with an unbiased viewpoint. Don't read that hooey put out by an inspired reporter who blames the laxness of the city government; I'll give you the facts without embellishment. Nothing beyond the bare fact of the disappearance is known about the first case. Robert Prosser, aged eleven, was sent to the grocery store by his mother about six-thirty last night and failed to return. That's all we know about it, except that it happened in Eagle Rock. The second case we have a little more data on. William Hill, aged twelve, was playing in Glendale last night with some companions. They were playing 'hide and go seek' and William hid. He could not be found by the boy who was searching and has not been found since. His companions became frightened and reported it about eight o'clock. They saw nothing, but mark this! Four of them agree that they heard a sound in the air like a motor humming."

  "That proves nothing."

  "Taken alone it does not, but in view of the third case, it is quite significant. The third case happened about nine-thirty last night. This time the victim was a girl, aged ten. She was returning home from a moving picture with some companions and she disappeared. This time the other children saw her go. They say she was suddenly taken straight up into the air and then disappeared from sight. They, also claim to have heard a sound like a big electric fan in the air at the time, although they could see nothing."

  "Had they heard the details of the second disappearance?"

  "They had not. I can see what you are thinking; that they were unconsciously influenced by the account given of the other case."

  "Consciously or unconsciously."

  "I doubt it, for the fourth case was almost a duplicate of the third. The fourth and fifth cases happened this morning. In the fourth case the child, for it was a nine year old girl this time, was lifted into the air in broad daylight and disappeared. This disappearance was witnessed, not only by children, but also by two adults, and their testimony agrees completely with that of the children. The fifth case is similar to the first: a ten year old boy disappeared without trace. The whole city is in a reign of terror."

  * * * * *

  The telephone at Carpenter's elbow rang and he answered it. A short conversation took place and he turned to me with a grim face as he hung up the receiver.

  "Another case has just been reported to police headquarters from Beverly Hills," he said. "Again the child was seen to be lifted into the air by some invisible
means and disappeared. The sound of a motor was plainly heard by five witnesses, who all agree that it was just, above their heads, but that nothing could be seen."

  "Was it in broad daylight?"

  "Less than an hour ago."

  "But, Jim, that's impossible!"

  "Why is it impossible?"

  "It would imply the invisibility of a tangible substance; of a solid."

  "What of it?"

  "Why, there isn't any such substance. Nothing of the sort exists."

  Carpenter pointed to one of the windows of his laboratory.

  "Does that window frame contain glass or not?" he asked.

  I strained my eyes. Certainly nothing was visible.

  "Yes," I said at a venture.

  He rose and thrust his hand through the space where the glass should have been.

  "Has this frame glass in it?" he asked, pointing to another.

  "No."

  He struck the glass with his knuckle.

  "I'll give up," I replied. "I am used to thinking of glass as being transparent but not invisible; yet I can see that under certain light conditions it may be invisible. Granted that such is the case, do you believe that living organisms can be invisible?"

  "Under the right conditions, yes. Has any observer been able to see any of the purple amoeba which we know are so numerous on the outer side of the heaviside layer?"

  "Not until they have entered the hole through the layer."

  "And yet those amoeba are both solid and opaque, as you know. Why is it not possible that men, or intelligences of some sort, are in the air about us and yet are invisible to our eyes!"

  "If they are, why haven't we received evidence of it years ago?"

  "Because there has only been a hole through the heaviside layer for six years. Before that time they could not penetrate it any more than poor Hadley could with his space ship. They have not entered the hole earlier because it is a very small one, at present only some two hundred and fifty yards in diameter in a sphere of over eight thousand miles diameter. The invaders have just found the entrance."