CHAPTER VII
HUMANITY'S ARMY
Taylor and Masters raised their arms. They were caught.
"There is nothing you can do now to save yourself, or yourcountry," Norden said. "Nothing. The spheres will destroy you andyour people. They will destroy every living creature who does notsurrender to my nation. Might will come into its own."
"Are you sure the spheres are so invincible?" Taylor asked."Remember, they were expelled from the sun. They must have beenchecked on the sun many times, otherwise they would havedestroyed the creatures who opposed them."
"They are greater than anything on the earth," Norden said.
"The spheres are not for the earth. Our battles are not theirs.By betraying your world to these creatures, you are betraying thewhole human race."
"This is not so!" Norden said, thickly. "I know how to handlethem. Orkins told me. He said he imitated their whistle and theyspared him, while they killed the others in the plant. He didn'trealize the value of his discovery. He was too much of a coward."
Norden beckoned his prisoners to him and disarmed them. Hepointed to the door of the casting room.
"Look!"
In the center of the room was a metal pot used for smallcastings. It was filled with molten, glowing metal. Beside it sata single orange sphere, spraying the pot with bolts of heat tokeep the contents warm, for the electrical energy that hadsupplied the melting pot had long-since been cut off.
In the center of the pot an orange-red bubble was rising from themetal. A sphere was forming on the surface of the metal.
"The rise of living energy!" Norden said. "Our own kind of lifemay have begun ages ago in much the same way. A spore from somefar off world may have drifted here through space, foundconditions just right, and taken root. Thus the spore of thesun--the whispering spheres--found a set of conditions fitted forgrowth. That metal pot is filled with seeds of the spheres. Oneby one they will hatch and grow into a force that will bringextinction to all men, except those of my race. The spheres donot want the world, they want the sun. We will see that they goback to the sun, after they have had their sport, killing theweaklings of your nation."
Taylor shuddered as he looked at the growing sphere. This deep,intense intelligence, which found sport in killing human beings,already seemed to be pouring from the depths of its half-formedbody.
"The fact that I am alive, proves my superiority," Norden said."Your people ran in terror at the sight of the spheres, but Ibargained with them. I made an alliance."
"You and your superiority!" Masters growled. "If you really weresmart, you'd have counted us. Don't you know there are three ofus who aren't afraid of the spheres?"
As Masters spoke, the point of Pember's bayonet touched the smallof Norden's back. The soldier had crept from the tunnel,unobserved by Norden, who was engrossed in the mental torture ofhis prisoners.
With a cry of rage Norden whirled and fired.
But Taylor had expected such a move. Even as Norden swung around,the officer sprang, knocking the spy off his feet and spoilinghis aim.
A warning whistle came from the sphere heating the cauldron.
"Back! Out of the doorway!" Taylor shouted, grappling withNorden. "I'll take care of him!"
Pember obeyed orders. He jumped back, dragging Masters with him.
Taylor wrenched the gun from Norden's hand, just as the spylanded a jarring blow to the body. Taylor staggered, lost hisbalance and dropped the gun.
Norden leaped forward to retrieve the weapon, but Taylor blockedthe move. He drove Norden back with a hard right. The two menclosed in and stood toe to toe, trading blows.
The screaming of the sphere grew louder. The creature by themetal pot seemed to be calling the others over the town. Thehalf-formed sphere in the melting pot joined and the entirebuilding rang with the shrill screams.
Taylor was slowly driving Norden back toward the door of thecasting room. A tentacle of flame reached out from the monster bythe metal pot, but it only circled the men. Apparently it wasafraid to strike, for fear of destroying friend as well as enemy.
Norden's knee came up. Taylor dodged in time to avoid a cripplingblow, but the leg caught him on the thigh, sending him back andupsetting him on the floor.
With a cry of triumph, Norden dived toward his foe. But Taylorrolled on his back, doubled his legs and met the hurtling bodywith a two-footed kick.
Norden grunted with pain. He staggered back, straight toward thesphere by the metal pot.
A whistled warning had no effect. The momentum carried Nordencrashing into the orange nucleus of energy. There was a blindingflash.
A small pile of glowing ashes appeared on the floor.
The whistle of the sphere stopped. It pulsed once. A feeble rayof heat lashed out toward Taylor, but the bolt halted in mid-air.
A _plop_ cracked in Taylor's ear. The sphere disappeared like abursting soap bubble.
"Cap! Are you all right!"
Masters appeared in the doorway behind Taylor.
"Gosh!" His eyes settled on the pile of ashes, the remains ofNorden. He turned to Taylor. "Are you all right, Cap?"
Taylor nodded.
"Where's the sphere?" asked Masters.
"He died of frustration--or sorrow--over having killed the wrongman," Taylor said grimly. Taylor indicated the half-formedmonster in the pot. "Now we've got to get rid of that one and allthe unhatched spores."
"If that metal pot hatches 'em, we will," said Masters. "We'lldump the metal."
The undeveloped sphere made no move to launch a deadly bolttoward the men. Apparently at this stage of incubation thespheres were harmless.
"Pember!"
"Yes, sir!" the soldier appeared in the doorway, carrying hisbayonetted gun.
"Keep a lookout for other spheres. Masters and I are going todump this metal pot."
"Yes, sir!"
An electric motor ordinarily dumped the pot into molds, but thismotor, like everything else electrical in the plant, now was outof commission. Masters, however, found a block and tackle andrigged it to a beam above the pot. The hook he attached to thebottom of the pot.
"Grab hold, Cap!" he said, taking the end of the rope.
Taylor loosened his tunic and seized the rope.
"Heave!" Masters chanted.
The two men strained. Slowly the pot tilted.
Pember, standing at a window, called out over his shoulder:
"They're coming back!"
Above the creak of the pulleys rose the murmuring whisper of thespheres.
"Heave!" Both men joined in the rhythmic call, putting theirweight on the rope. The pot tilted more.
The half-formed sphere whistled loudly and the spheres circlingover the plant answered.
"Hurry!" Pember urged.
"Heave!" chorused the men on the ropes. The pulleys creaked.
The room suddenly blazed with a brilliant orange glow as amaddened sphere floated through the hole in the roof. It hung inthe air, pulsating, scanning what was taking place below.
"Heave!" cried the two men. The pot was at an angle. The hatchingsphere screamed to the globe above.
The floating sphere shrieked. Flame danced over its surface.
"It--It's got--eyes!" Masters said, spacing his words with tugson the ropes.
"Don't look!" Taylor warned. "Heave!"
Pember faced the sphere. He patted his Garand.
"Give 'im hell, boy!"
He swung the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet whinedoff the sphere as if it were steel. Pember jerked his head indespair. Angrily he fired again. His tin hat slid to one side ofhis head at a rakish angle.
"You spawn of hell!" he cried.
Pember lowered his gun. The sphere pulsed ominously. Then thedoughboy charged.
Beneath the brim of his helmet Pember's jaws were set. Hishalf-closed eyes, glazed by the dazzling light from the sphere,were two slits of savage determination.
There was something glorious in that charge. It was a soldiergoing
into battle against hopeless odds. And it was more. Thearmy of human civilisation at that moment consisted of one buckprivate, pitting everything he had against something that evenscience could not analyze.
The sudden attack seemed to surprise the sphere. It bounded back,moving swiftly out of the way of the advancing one-man army.
Pember roared. There were no words in what he shouted. It wasjust a cry, the battle cry of humanity.
"Heave!" chorused Taylor and Masters.
They too had a battle cry. Every man was doing his best and woulddie doing it, if necessary.
There was a crack and a hiss. A flicker of flame flashed over thecharging soldier. An odor of charred human flesh filled the room.
Then came a new sound, the hissing splash of spilled metal.
The pot was dumped.
Taylor dropped the rope and faced the sphere. He saw the charredpile of ashes beside the inhuman creature. Nearby was a fusedtube of metal, all that was left of Pember's rifle.
"All right, you devil!" shouted Taylor. "Strike and be damned!There's one thing you can't fix, and that's the metal pot. Yourspores are dead. Your mistake was in having a metal pot for amother!"
Taylor sensed understanding in the sphere. Those eyes that werenot eyes, but windows of the mind, seemed to fade. Flame lickedout again from the monster, but it did not launch toward Taylor.Nor was Masters the target.
Instead, the flame reached toward the fading yellow hemisphereand the cooling pool of metal on the floor. There lay the hopesof the species on this planet, wrecked with a block and tackle.
_Plop_!
The hemisphere exploded like a bubble.
_Plop_!
The mourning sphere disappeared.
_Plop. Plop. Plop._
Three more spheres appeared in the opening in the roof andvanished.
Masters tugged on Taylor's sleeve.
"Come on! We've got a chance, if we can get to the tunnel!"
Taylor shook his head.
"No need. We're safe now. If they've changed to radio energy, thebig broadcast is on."
The sky was filled with exploding spheres as the whispers sobbedthe tale of the disaster. A score of the energy monsters, bredfrom the metal pot overnight, burst in the rays of the risingsun. Energy, meeting resistance, was changing to something else.The war of energy and matter might continue on the molten surfaceof the sun, but on earth there would be only the wars of ideals.
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The Whispering Spheres Page 7