The Collected Stories

by Earl

  While she ate, Elson went back in the restaurant and came out with two big paper bags loaded with cans. They stuffed their pockets and left, with the girl carrying a third bag filled with tinned foods. She led the way out of the alley and turned into a broad avenue which had once been a scenic boulevard, lined with grass and shading trees. Now a remnant of surviving greenery struggled to bloom in the tom shambles.

  “We live a few blocks from here, down this street,” said the girl, picking her way carefully between tumbled walls.

  Elson could see her shudder every time they passed nameless shapes around which buzzing flies hovered. They were mainly skeletons with shreds of clothing hiding obscene bulges. Once they came upon a mangy dog. snarling wolfishly, munching with sharp teeth at one of the bodies. Elson set down his cans and put a hissing alpha-charge through the beast, revolted deep within himself.

  “How long have you been in this Godforsaken ruin—and why?” Elson failed to see that.

  “Ever since the—the bombardment, six months ago. It was awful—five days of destruction from the sky—screaming—fire—death——” The girl’s whole manner bet raved an inner hysteria at the mere recollection. “My father and I survived—miraculously—in the basement of our home. My father is—well, he didn’t want to leave. I’ve been going out every few days, dressed in men’s clothes, a cap over my hair, but I lost it to-day. Food is harder to find every day. They have plenty of it in the soldiers’ garrison at the other end of town, but I would not like to go there—again. They drink and sing, and other women——”

  SHE LOOKED up at Elson. “War is so cruel, so terrible!” she cried. “And so senseless!”

  Elson walked on stonily, though her words echoed in his mind. Quite true—but he could see only one road to peace. The girl turned before an apartment house whose upper stories had been blown to atomic dust. At the basement entrance in the side gangway, Elson set the cans down and murmured a farewell, but the girl put a hand on his arm.

  “Please—let my father thank you for your kindness.”

  “No need.” said Elson shortly, turning on his heel. He turned back again and involuntarily drew his pistol as the door opened. The old. hollow-cheeked man who stepped out peered with sharp eyes at Elson. He had recognized the pilot’s uniform as that of the Other Side.

  “Your pistol, man. put it away,” he said deprecatingly.

  “Were—enemies,” reminded Elson. The mutual atrocities of both sides in the Atom War had engendered a flaming hatred between the two warring peoples. Yet Elson realized he was doing lip service to a code rather than speaking his own inclinations.

  “We were human beings with a common heritage before we were enemies,” retorted the old fellow crisply. He stepped up to Elson, stared shrewdly in his face. “Would you shoot me and my daughter down in cold blood? Of course not, nor would you. Enemies—silly prattle of the propagandists in this mad time.”

  “But I must go.” insisted Elson in stiff tones.

  This time the old man was in the way. “You have befriended my daughter. You have brought food. Share one meal with us. Your commanding officer will never hear of it.”

  Elson flushed, stung. He pretended not to notice that the girl beside him had again put her hand on his arm. and had said. “Please do!” Nor that she smiled warmly as he nodded.

  “Come in. then,” said the old man eagerly. Elson followed thoughtfully, wondering why he was smiling so strangely. There was something in all this that Elson didn’t quite fathom.

  “I’m Professor Davidson,” said the old man as they ate of canned salmon, peaches, milk and pudding. “Scientist, retired, and”—he smiled whimsically—“formerly well-to-do. I own this building—what’s left of it—and have carried on private researches for the past ten years in this laboratory.”

  He swung an arm to the back part of the long, low chamber. Elson glanced again at the paraphernalia there. In the gloom of the basement the various apparatus assumed fantastic shapes. He made out what seemed to be a modification of a proton-blast projector.

  “I am still carrying on my researches,” continued the professor. “But it is trying at times. The city no longer furnishes us with electrical power, water, or easily available food.”

  “Why have you stayed here?” queried Elson. “There are a hundred other cities——”

  “Ah. but this is the safest!” chortled Professor Davidson. “All those other cities are open to attack—any day, any minute. It stands to reason that this one won’t be bombarded again! I might not be so lucky in another air raid in some other city as to live through a holocaust that wiped out seven-eighths of this city’s population. And I had to have—must have—freedom to finish my work!”

  He had said the last with a sudden flare in his eyes. He lowered his voice again and went on. “Fortunately, I have a Diesel generator for electrical power and a supply of oil from this building’s oil-burning heating plant. Water—plentifully bestowed from Heaven—we caught in barrels outside. Of course, we boil it before use. Food—well, that has been poor Lorna’s job and she’s been a thoroughbred about it. We’ve never really lacked for nourishment because of her tireless efforts.”

  “Except lately, father,” reminded the girl. “Yesterday I couldn’t find a thing all day. To-day——”

  “You started very early to-day,” burst in the professor, as though on sudden thought. “At dawn, Lorna! You weren’t heading north, were you? Toward——”

  THE GIRL’S hand trembled in the act of lifting a spoon. Father and daughter exchanged glances. It came in a flash to Elson. The soldiers’ garrison, at the other side of town—they had plenty of food, as the girl had said.

  Had she been desperate enough to think of going there? Elson knew what a guard garrison was like—one that was supplied with drink.

  The professor was speaking again, a startled note in his voice. “Lorna, I’ve told you—you must never——”

  Elson rose to his feet, face hard, interrupting. “How can you risk your daughter’s life and—and safety like that?” he demanded icily, though there was a storm within him. “You, professor, have stayed here like a cowering rat while she has had to go out foraging among slinking brutes, human and otherwise, to keep you fed so that you could putter around here——”

  “Stop! Don’t say that to my father!” Lorna was also on her feet, indignant, angry. “It is not puttering. My father’s work is important. I’d make any sacrifice for that to go on. Even the garrison!”

  Elson stared at the girl in astonishment, then sat down. “Perhaps you’d better tell me just what this is all about—this experimentation that seems to be so important.”

  The old man nodded. “My scientific work in the past ten years has been in the field of astrophysics. But I chose the unorthodox line of attempting to do things without space-time, rather than with it. Space-time, briefly, is the particular matrix in which this universe of ours is cast. Yet it must be contained—in a larger sense—in another matrix. Space is not the absolute nothingness popular fancy pictures. It is warped and altered by the matter within it. It carries radiation, transmits energy. True nothingness would not do this.

  “But—suppose there were a true nothingness—a real blankness—an ultraspace. What would it be? It would not carry radiation or transmit energy. It would not carry the warp of gravitation. Time would not exist in it. Matter would be in a static condition in such an ultraspace. It would be lightless, heatless, soundless, timeless. It would be a negativity of space. It——”

  Professor Davidson glanced at Elson’s blank face, coughed, and began again. “I’ll skip the technicalities. At any rate—I succeeded in achieving this ultraspace. Come over here to my apparatus.”

  When they had reached the other end of the chamber. Elson looked at the affair with puzzled interest. It had been installed in a radio cabinet, and resembled vaguely the inner parts of a radio receiver. One of its tubes was ten inches high. knobbed with a dozen lead-ins leading from the tube’
s heart to various coils. The tube was rather shapeless and looked homemade. The old scientist explained with pride that he had blown it himself, and had built its complex interior bit by bit. One of its insulated leads trailed to a globe-shaped wire basket a foot in diameter resting on the cabinet’s top.

  The professor pointed to this. “In here my ultraspace is formed. I will only explain that the large tube below is one which absorbs energy and grounds it into the earth. It sucks all energy from within the wire globe. And because space-time—in inadequate wording—is a form of energy, it sucks space-time from that wire globe—leaving nothing.”

  He snapped a switch and the Diesel generator burst out in a bull-like roar. It subsided to a steady drone after a moment. The scientist went around to the front of the cabinet and fingered its controls. Within the box, a queer hum arose. The big tube glowed suddenly in phosphorescent splendor.

  “Watch the wire globe!” cried the professor.

  ELSON saw its interior gradually darken. Soon it was opaque—seemed to have turned to a solid ball of ebony. The surrounding wire shimmered and vanished. Then, in the next five minutes the ebony ball became impossibly blacker, till it hurt Elson’s eyes to look at it. lie was a little dazed. Somehow it was like looking into a stupendous, yawning cavern.

  “Now,” called the scientist above the droning, whining noises. “Take out your alpha-pistol, plunge your hand into that globe and fire the gun.” When Elson obeyed wonderingly, but hesitated touching the black globe, the scientist shrilled, “It won’t hurt! You won’t feel the wire. It’s within that globe where two things can exist in the same space—or in no space! Good—now turn the pistol at Lorna’s heart and pull the trigger—oh, all right then—my heart!”

  Elson’s flesh crawled. He had thrust his right hand into the dense black hole up to his wrist, with the sensation of pushing it into a bowl of mercury metal—pliant, faintly resistant. Hand and gun had disappeared completely in that ultra-night. He shook his head at the professor and pointed the pistol—at a guess since he could see nothing of his hand—at the wall. He pulled the trigger—again and again. Nothing happened.

  He jerked his hand out, muttering, ran to the door and when outside tried the pistol. A hissing charge went up into the air. The drones died away as Elson came back in and the scientist met him at the table, motioning to the chairs.

  “Naturally the globe of ultraspace I made is imperfect,” said the professor. “Otherwise, you would not have been able to move your hand at all. You would not have been able to hold the pistol—or pull the trigger. It cannot drain the subtler energies of the human body, but it can—as you saw, cancel the coarser energies of the alpha-charge.” He looked quizzically at Elson.

  “A nice little scientific toy,” shrugged the pilot.

  The scientist went on, as though he had not completed his sentence, “—and of the proton-blast, neutron-beam, deuteron-flame, electron-ray, and all those other gigantic energies with which mankind is slaying itself!”

  Elson stared, dawning comprehension lighting his eyes.

  “I had already developed this ultraspace before the war. I was satisfied in having achieved a scientific milestone. Just when I was ready to publish my results—the war broke out. The world was drenched in blood. Then it struck me that my ultraspace could be a great anti-weapon. No destructive agencies could operate in a zone of ultraspace. I reasoned that if I could find a way to project my ultraspace from a distance, and enlarge its sphere of activity to include entire battlefields—you see? Strangely, it takes very little power to produce a large amount of ultraspace. The energies that are absorbed from it may in turn be used to run the original apparatus that extracts the energies. A closed, self-dependent system—almost a perpetual motion machine.

  “I went to work. I had nearly finished making a workable ultraspace projector when this city was attacked. I waited here, praying that I would be saved for more than just my life’s sake. We lived through it. Lorna and I. Since then my work has been slowed, but it’s done. It stands there the antiweapon!”

  lie pointed to the machine that to Elson had looked like a proton-blast gun. The pilot sprang to his feet.

  “Why arc you telling me all this?” he exclaimed. “Such an anti-weapon would mean victory for the side that has it. I have promised nothing to you—tried to go away. Now you have me in a peculiar position. The military leaders of My Side would give their eyes for the anti-weapon. And the military leaders of Your Side——”

  “Your Side! My Side! The Other Side!” scoffed Professor Davidson. “Meaningless rhetoric! Only chance governed your birth on Your Side. If you had been born here in this city—you would be on My Side. The whole war hinges on pronouns such as those. It’s as silly as tweedledeedee and tweedledeedum!”

  HE GOT UP, began pacing the room, face aflame with some inner fire that had smoldered for years.

  “I am not on Your Side. Nor am I on My Side. I am on Neither Side! Or better yet—I am on Humanity’s Side. No, Elson, I am not your enemy, as your attitude betokens. This antiweapon will not be used to bring victory to either side. It is to stop the war altogether, at its present dead-lock!”

  The struggle within Elson was plainly visible on his lace. Certain things had seemed crystal clear in his mind. That His Side must win—that only in that way could peace be attained. Yet be had unconsciously hated that concept all the time.

  Professor Davidson stepped before him, spread his arms. “My boy,” he said quietly, “if I am your enemy, so be it. Here I am—unarmed—helpless. All you have to do is pull out your gun—destroy me—and your way is clear to insure victory for Your Side. My daughter could not stop you.”

  Elson grunted and shook his head. “I guess the only thing I can do,” he said slowly, “is to go and forget I’ve ever been here.”

  “And put an alpha-charge through your brain down the street?” hissed the old scientist. “Don’t be a fool!”

  The pilot flushed dully. “All right,” he snapped. “What do you want me to do?”

  A gleam of relief—satisfaction—approval came from the professor’s eyes. An electrical tension in the air seemed to vanish like mist. Lorna-drew a long breath, watching and listening to all this.

  The scientist’s answer was a question.

  “You have a ship, perhaps, over at the airport?”

  “Yes, but in pretty bad shape. It’ll take several days’ repair work to make it halfway navigable again.”

  “Good enough.” The old scientist drummed his lingers on the table a moment. Then he looked up. “You see, Elson,” he explained. “I needed some one with nerve to help in this. When I laid eyes on you. something told me you were my man. even though you were of the so-called Other Side. That was why I wanted you to stay—wanted to talk to you. I’ve practically finished the anti-weapon—but now I need a demonstration. Mounted on a ship, the anti-weapon could be used over any certain battlefield and quickly prove its powers.”

  “I see that,” grunted Elson. “But then what? One man can’t stop a war like this one. There are a dozen major fronts and a hundred and one smaller ones. The anti-weapon, to stop the war as you hope, would have to be produced in quantity and mounted on a suitably armed and protected fleet of swift, powerful planes. One lone man in a small, half-ruined ship couldn’t do more than cause a little talk.”

  “Of course, of course,” said the scientist testily. “I’m not a crackpot egomaniac. My plans are this: I have drawn up complete blue prints and formulae for the anti-weapon—for any range and extent. These are to be delivered to the nearest headquarters of the Pacifist League. You’ve heard of them. In the early part of this terrible war they managed to put out circulars and create difficulties for the warlords. Most of them have been executed, but not the ringleaders. They escaped to the neutral regions of the north and are there trying to cause a universal anti-war movement. But of course the war-fever has not burned out and may not for another few years.

  “Now suppose these formulae
are delivered to the League. And suppose at the same time—lest they have human doubts—an incontestable demonstration is given of the power of the anti-weapon—you see? The Pacifist League will promptly take steps to create the very fleet and means you suggest for ending the war with the anti-weapon!”

  Elson thought it over calmly and carefully. It was a long chance any way he looked at it. His ship might fold up. He might be shot down. The projector —though the professor had supreme confidence in it—might be a worthless thing—even dangerous. Yet none of these things mattered if it could truly bring an end to the chaotic war. Elson was suddenly sure of that, though yesterday he had killed a man without regret. Funny how he hadn’t thought of that till now. Funny how humans followed a false god blindly, till they had a chance to get by themselves and think.

  The scientist was looking at Elson with a deep pleading in his eyes. The pilot said nothing, but slowly drew off his heavy leather coat. “I’m staying,” he said simply, when that was done.

  IN THE next week, they began carrying out their plans. First Elson—with Lorna’s help—pushed his light plane into an empty hangar, out of sight of prying eyes. Then the three of them began carrying parts of the anti-weapon from the laboratory to the hangar.

  They were delayed then for three days when the sounds of aerial battle burst over their ears. They had to stay out of sight. Once they saw ten of One Side’s aircraft drive back nine of the Other Side’s planes directly over their heads. For secrecy’s sake, they stayed in their laboratory-home.

  “It’s My Side’s planned push,” said Elson. He put no emphasis on the words “My Side.”

  “Our military leaders planned to sweep into this sector. My commission—before I was brought down—was to spy on enemy gunnery north of this city. For all we know, we may now be in My Side’s territory.”