Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  “I don’t like this.” Dirk muttered. “We must be fifteen or twenty miles away from the spot where the ships were anchored. We couldn’t see them now anyway, but still I feel as if that fog is . . . is hiding something.”

  He watched the green phosphorescence spill over them like some liquid, forming tiny sword and designs as it completely shrouded their boat.

  He could set Larry only as a dim figure through the concealing vapor and he could hardly see the rail in front of him.

  “I’m going below.” he shouted. Somehow he fell that he had to raise his voice to be heard. “See if I can get New York.”

  In the control cabin he took the head phones from his assistant and opened the channel for Standard’s New York key station. For ten minutes he waited, hearing nothing but an unintelligible crackling.

  He was just ready to snap the switch off when, through the electrical sputterings, a faint, frenzied voice poured in.

  Dirk tensed anxiously, cursing the static disturbance that drowned out the words. He turned the volume up to capacity, until the noise was deafening.

  Then he made out a few words.

  “For—God’s—sake!,” the straining voice implored, “d—don’t—” The voice faded out altogether as the roaring static increased in volume.

  Dirk swore impatiently and worked desperately at the controls. What had that voice been trying to say? To whom had it addressed that almost fanatical plea? He could feel a tight close feeling in his throat and the palms of his hands were damp with sweat. There was something unnaturally terrifying about that voice, that desperate, fear-crazed voice.

  THEN he picked it up again.

  “New York calling . . . warning . . . too late . . .” the desperate voice cracked and faded out, but he caught it again almost immediately. “Blue ships . . . attacking . . . attacking everywhere . . . green jog . . .”

  Dirk felt a moment of terror.

  Green fog! What had the green fog to do with this unnerving business? Was it the same green fog that was rolling over the ship, even—his eyes flashed to the door—seeping through the keyhole and under the door of his control room?

  The voice came in again: “Red ships . . . blue ships . . . from God knows where . . . attacking . . .”

  The voice faded out again and then, while Dirk was dialing frantically, an ear shattering clap of noise and static blasted through the set. lasting about ten seconds. It was followed by a. deep, and somehow final, silence.

  Dirk worked frantically to pick up the voice again, to pick up any sound from the ether, but his efforts were worse than useless. His mind was too stunned to function logically.

  “God!” he muttered aloud. “What does all this mean?”

  After another futile attempt to contact New York, he sprang to his feet and banged out of the control cabin. On the deck he found Larry, and several of the ship’s crew staring anxiously at the western horizon.

  The green fog was, if anything, denser and more impenetrable than it had been fifteen minutes earlier. But to the west, toward the direction in which New York lay, there was a vast white light spreading for miles in all directions. It was this phenomenon that had attracted the attention of Larry and the crew.

  It was similar to the Northern Lights, except that it was constant and unvaryingly bright.

  “For the Lord’s sake,” Larry exclaimed, as Dirk came alongside him. “What’s going on?”

  Dirk started to tell him of the voice he had picked up from the ether, but Larry grabbed his arm excitedly.

  “Look!” he cried, pointing toward the vast expanse of bright light which lay over the western horizon like a great pall.

  Dirk’s eyes followed Larry’s pointing finger. Through the wide area of brilliant light he could make out four great shapes moving with incredible speed. They were ships, airships, of some sort. Torpedo-like in shape, more than a hundred feet in length, they flashed through the chalk-white expanses of blinding light like mighty, fantastic sharks.

  TWO of the great ships were blue the other two, red. That was all he had time to make out for, in the next instant, the four huge shapes had flashed over their heads, to disappear with a rush of air into the enveloping green fog.

  “Did you see that?” Larry asked shakenly.

  Dirk nodded.

  His attention was again attracted to the great white light that covered half the sky now, blotting out the faint rays of the cloud-hidden sun. More gigantic ships were coming into sight, flashing into the range of his vision for a brief instant and then disappearing like roaring phantoms into the green fog.

  This time he was able to notice that from the rear of the cigar-shaped ships a shower of fiery sparks trailed, mingling for an instant with the green phosphorescence of the fog before vanishing.

  A terrible, frightening premonition was growing in Dirk’s mind. A horrible certainty was growing in him, born of what he had seen and heard in the last mad hour.

  These strange terrifying ships that flashed over their heads were not from any part of the earth. They had come from—a phrase from the frantic voice he had heard leaped into his mind—from God knows where.

  What was their purpose? From the information he had received from that unknown voice it was easy to guess. Attacking . . . attacking everywhere. Those phrases came to his mind.

  Were these attacking ships from outer space? From the stars? It was too fantastic to consider, yet there was no other answer to the mysterious, frightening questions his mind was asking.

  The captain came up alongside the tense, watching group at the rail then.

  “Well,” he said, and there was a strange note of anxious hesitation in his voice. “What will our course be? Stand by or continue to make for New York? I’ve been afloat for forty years but I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s got me worried.”

  “I think,” Dirk said, “we’d better stay on our course. There’s nothing to be learned out here. How long will it take us to reach New York?”

  “A day, maybe two,” the captain answered.

  “Is that the closest land?” Dirk asked.

  The captain shook his head. “Florida’s only six hours away. Maybe we’d better put in there.”

  “It might be best,” Dirk said.

  ALL through that lowering, sunless, fog-filled day they made for the jutting finger of land that is Florida, and there was a feeling of gloom and despair on the boat that was as palpable as the enveloping green fog.

  At dusk they were sailing blind. Their fog horn was sounding a dismal warning to other ships, but Dirk, standing alone at the rail, had the strange feeling that it was an unnecessary precaution. He had the feeling that they were entirely alone.

  He had been standing there for possibly five minutes before he heard the faint sputtering sound. It was close and coming closer, but he couldn’t locate its source. Then he realized that the sound was above his head.

  He glanced upward and his breath caught painfully in his throat. He wanted to scream out but he couldn’t.

  For settling toward him, through the swirling waves of phosphorescent fog, was one of the huge, sinister, torpedoshaped air ships that they had been sighting all through the day.

  From its bullet-like nose a beam of light suddenly shot forth bathing him in a white circle of brilliant whiteness.

  The light flicked off immediately.

  Dirk pitched forward against the rail. The white ray had seared him with angry heat, blinding him, robbing him of breath and strength.

  He felt himself falling forward, but he was powerless to prevent it. He struck the water and there was no sensation of cold or wetness.

  Nothing.

  He felt rather than heard a tremendous explosion near him, then mighty waves were rolling over him, tossing him around as a chip in a gale.

  A wave flung him high in the air and when he struck water again it was only a few feet deep. With his last conscious act of reason he knew that he was being thrown up on the shore by the sea.


  Then a black chasm opened before him and he was falling helplessly. His last sensation was one of infinite pressure closing inexorably on him.

  CHAPTER III

  Two Men on a Beach

  ACROSS the wide expanse of shale and rock there was no sign of life.

  The rock bordered the sandy beach of the sea and the only evidence of vegetable life in this arid stretch was the milky slime that had gathered on these rocks.

  The sun was strong and hot. It had completed half its trip across the heavens before anything in this desolate area moved . . .

  The two men crept cautiously from a hole in the ground and. alter a careful, frightened look all about them and into the sky, particularly into the sky. They rolled a stone in front of the hole and stood up.

  They were clad in coarse leather shirts and skirts and their hair was long and thick. One had very black hair and was stocky and heavily muscled. The other was taller, better proportioned, with light hair.

  They moved cautiously toward the sea, pausing frequently to inspect the cloudless sky. In spite of their crude clothes and blunt axes, there was a look of intelligence about them. Their eyes were bright and alert, their foreheads wide and high. They looked intelligent, but also they looked as if their intelligence might be a handicap to them. For their passive, set features seemed to indicate that their intelligence was not an active ally with which they met their problems of existence, but rather a strong instinct, a memory almost, that they were in the process of forgetting.

  One of them carried a leather sack over his shoulder and when they reached the beach he opened this up and began searching up and down the beach. His companion joined him. It was several minutes later before they came on a slowly crawling crab, making his awkward way to the blue-green water.

  The black-haired man jerked his stone ax from his belt and pounced on the crab. One blow of the ax shattered its shell, stunning it. With another quick, almost automatic glance upward, he shoved the ax back into his belt, scooped the crab into the leather sack and tossed it over his shoulder.

  Then the two men proceeded, eyes flicking constantly over the sandy beach and the rocks that lined it.

  There were no words exchanged between the hunters. The task before them was a simple one and they both understood this. There was no need for communication.

  In a half hour their sack was half full and they had wandered perhaps a half-mile along the beach.

  It was while the black-haired hunter was stopping to thrust a stunned crab into the sack that his companion noticed something in the heavens that galvanized him into action.

  He sprang forward, catching his kneeling friend by the arm.

  “Look Jan,” he said. “They come.”

  THE man called Jan rose quickly to his feet and stared in the direction indicated by his companion’s pointing finger.

  “Yes,” he muttered after a brief pause. “You are right, Karl. They come. They always come. Quick! We must hide.”

  The two men dropped to their knees and crawled to the sheltering shadow of the rock formation which skirted the beach. There they squirmed their bodies into a narrow crevice where an overhanging layer of rock partially concealed them.

  Jan, the stocky, black-haired hunter, pulled his sack of crabs out of sight and then peered carefully over the rim of the rock.

  The huge blue ship from which they had hidden was closer now. It was moving slowly, about a half-mile above the ground, close enough for the men to observe the rows of port holes along its side. The giant airship was over a hundred feet long, torpedo-shaped, with a fin-like contrivance at its tail. The nose of the cruising ship was set with a gleaming glass eye, almost two feet in diameter. From this, the men knew, a blinding, horribly painful ray could strike out with the speed of light itself.

  Karl ran nervous fingers through his wheat-colored hair in an instinctive gesture.

  “Did they see us, Jan?” he asked in a whisper.

  Jan shrugged stolidly. “Maybe. We must hide till they are gone. If they see us it is bad.”

  The blue ship passed over them, its long shadow flickering over the ground like a premonition of disaster. Then it circled in a wide arc and headed back, dropping lower and lower, until it was a scant hundred feet from the earth.

  The blue of the ship was light and delicate and the sun’s rays caught and sparkled on its gleaming surface like a beautiful kaleidoscope pattern.

  The two leather-clad men trembled as the great shape drifted closer, like a marauding shark sure of its prey.

  “They have seen us,” Karl whispered in an agonized voice.

  “There is nothing we can do,” Jan answered fatalistically. “Do not move. They may go away.”

  The next maneuver of the hovering blue ship proved that this was wishful thinking. Its nose tilted downward and, with a sudden terrifying burst of speed, the ship flashed at them.

  From its smooth polished belly a gleaming nozzle appeared.

  Karl screamed.

  A crackling, blinding bolt of light stabbed down from this nozzle as the blue ship levelled out and streaked away.

  The livid bolt of power exploded into the rocky ground with a sputtering roar. Its searing, blasting force tore a huge hole in the granite-hard ground, scattering dirt and rocks in a wide arc. A minor landslide followed. Boulders and chipped rock slid down the short incline and fell with a heavy splash into the placid water. A burnt, acrid smoke poured from the ragged hole in the earth, and white powdery film of rock dust drifted in the air like a heavy fog.

  JAN and Karl were still crouched in the narrow crevice not daring to move. They were not more than ten feet from the spot where the ray of light had struck the ground.

  When the rock dust began to settle, clearing the air somewhat, Jan looked around cautiously. The blue ship was vanishing in the distance.

  “They have gone,” he said to Karl. “It is safe now to come out.”

  He crawled to his feet and looked at the burnt, blackened hole in the earth.

  “They missed,” he said simply. He rubbed his hand over his square, smoke-darkened face and there was a faint glint of anger in his eyes. “They are always after us and they do not miss very often. Sometimes I wish we could—do something.”

  Karl looked at him in slight amazement.

  “What could we do to them?”

  “We could fight!” Jan said with stubborn anger. His legs were spread wide apart and his deep, wide chest rose and fell rapidly. There was a belligerent thrust to his jaw.

  Karl looked at him and sighed.

  “You talk like a fool,” he said. “You always talk about fighting even when you must know it is useless.”

  Slowly the light died from Jan’s eyes. His thick shoulders slumped and he shoved a tangled lock of black hair from his eyes with a discouraged gesture.

  “You are right,” he said wearily. “I am a fool. It is best that those of you who are left should live in the caves in the ground and hide. That is the only way.”

  Karl nodded silently and picked up the leather sack of crabs. He was turning to retrace their steps along the beach when Jan’s excited voice stopped him.

  “Karl! Karl!” Jan cried urgently.

  Karl wheeled, alert for danger, but Jan was pointing at the water where the rocks and debris had fallen. Huge foamy bubbles were churning the area into a green froth.

  “What is it?” Karl asked, half-fearfully.

  Jan shook his head dumbly.

  Suddenly, through the frothing bubbles and agitated water, they saw a darker substance coming to the surface. Then an arm broke through the water and feebly struck out.

  “It’s a body,” Karl cried excitedly. He glanced worriedly at Jan. “We must go. This might be trouble.”

  But Jan was already leaping across the shore, through the waves and into the water. With strong clumsy strokes he swam to the foundering body which the sea had so miraculously cast up.

  Gripping his fist in the hair of its head he turned and swam t
oward shore, towing his unconscious burden behind him.

  Karl helped him drag the body onto the beach. There they turned it on its back and regarded it with curiosity.

  It was the body of a large young man with big shoulders and dark hair. The face was strong, with rugged, even features. He was clothed in a porous material that wrapped around his legs in two cylinders. Two jackets of the same material covered his torso.

  “He lives,” Jan said suddenly. He bent down and placed his ear on the man’s chest. He nodded after a moment. “He lives,” he repeated.

  “What will we do with him?” Karl asked.

  “Take him to the cave,” Jan answered. “He needs food and warmth.”

  Karl frowned. “That may not be good. Maybe we should leave him here. He is nothing to us.”

  “He is our kind,” Jan said almost angrily. “He is not one of the—the others.”

  He stooped and placed his hands under the man’s shoulders and Karl, still grumbling under his breath, lifted his feet. Moving slowly they carried their heavy burden along the beach.

  CHAPTER IV

  A Strange Awakening

  AWAKENING was like swimming upward through miles of dense, green water. It was a gradual process that at times seemed endless and infinite.

  For long periods Dirk Masters was floating at the point of consciousness but it was not until he had slipped back again and again into the dark recesses of oblivion that his mind finally broke the surface of the shimmering green water and he was able to see the light.

  For a long timeless interval he lay on his back in the narrow stone room, staring dazedly, uncomprehendingly at the rough ceiling. Then his eyes closed wearily.

  Jan sat on a rough stone slab at the side of the narrow cot watching the gaunt face of the man lying there. His face was wrinkled with troubled lines. This big man had been lying here for eight days now, lifeless except for a few incoherent mutterings which had passed the loose lips.

  Unconsciously Jan’s hands tightened anxiously. He didn’t know why he was so worried about this man. It was nothing to him if he lived or died.