The Collected Stories

by Earl

  “Yeah?” Behind the sheriff’s drawl was stark fear. He had seen enough of the fire to know it wasn’t anything normal. “Then we’ll have to find a way to stop it.”

  “I don’t know if there is a way!” Dan Nelson found himself croaking. Sheriff Mack looked at him queerly. “There’s got to be!” he ground out. “We’re going to try to choke it off with fresh concrete—a big wall of it—” Nelson threw up his hands and left. He went back to his car and headed for town. He tried to think of something to do. Notify the authorities of his conjectures? Try to get scientific minds on the job? But would there be time?

  Nelson sweated, but from more than the heat. In a way, he felt personally responsible, for he had helped Dr. Berg develop the bulb in its earlier stages. But aside from that, it was his problem anyway, as it would be the problem of any other human being who knew what the fire as and what its continued depredation meant.

  He neared the town without having decided on any definite course of action. He arrived just in time to see a gyrocopter plane settling at the outskirts. On impulse, Nelson turned toward it. Ordinarily its arrival would have brought the whole town out. Now, it was unnoticed except by a few barefooted kids.

  Nelson drove close to the plane.

  “Cameraman?” he inquired of the short, stocky man who clambered out of its rear cockpit.

  “News service,” nodded the pilot. “I’m here to take pix of the fire. Say, what’s all this about they can’t put it out? Whatsamatter with these hillbillies?”

  Nelson took out his wallet and waved a ten-dollar bill.

  “Take me up with you?”

  “Against the rules, Buddy,” returned the cameraman, taking the bill and grinning. “But I’ve got to have some eats first, and gas for the buggy. I drove it all the way from Chicago.”

  CHAPTER III

  A Lifetime in a Day

  AN hour later, Nelson and the cameraman were circling high above the fire area. Nelson peered down anxiously. Just how fast was the atom-fire spreading? He saw that it had already eaten out a circle roughly five miles in diameter. Some rapid mental calculation convinced him that its diameter increased at an unchangeable rate. Unlike a true forest fire, it was not subject to the vagaries of wind and available fuel.

  Therefore, the larger it got, the more rapidly it consumed equal areas. In a few days—weeks at the most—it would sweep out like an express train, to swallow the earth whole in its fiery maw. Nelson shuddered.

  But another thing engaged his attention and made him thoughtful. The fire itself was actually only a thin ring, perhaps a hundred feet thick. All the center area was free of flame. It was hideously black and seared looking—lifeless, chilling.

  But it wasn’t burning any more! Nelson’s pulses throbbed with sudden hope. Then it wasn’t a complete disintegration! There was ash from the atom-fire—black ash that didn’t burn any more.

  He twisted around in his cockpit and yelled across to the pilot above the rumbling swish of the gyrocopter blades.

  “Hey, Reed—how would you like to make history?”

  “Make who?” yelled back the pilot.

  “History! History!” screamed Nelson. “Land down there—in the middle of the black area.” At a determined shake of the pilot’s head, Nelson half arose as though to force him.

  “You’ve got to, man!” he pleaded. “What do you want—money? A hundred dollars—”

  “Dangerous!” shouted back Reed dubiously, staring at Nelson’s grimly earnest face. “We might crack up—want to take a chance?”

  Nelson weighed that for a second. It wasn’t just his life. But if he were killed now, and nobody knew what he knew, till it was too late. . . . But it might be too late anyway, in a few more hours. If it once got out of hand, it wouldn’t help for all the world to know to a man. It was a race against time and chance. He pointed down. The pilot nodded, set his lips grimly, and lowered the plane.

  Fortunately, the thirty feet of landing space needed by the gyrocopter was free of dangerous rocks beneath the obscuring black blanket that lay over the ground. Nelson jumped out eagerly and picked up a handful of jet black matter that trickled as a coarse powder through his fingers. It seemed peculiarly heavy.

  “Neutronic matter!” he cried jubilantly. “Neutrons stop a cosmic-ray cold, which was the way Dr. Berg captured them in the first place.[*] And neutrons are stable enough to resist this primary disintegration too. This dead, black stuff left after the fire is composed of them. All the elements that were here before are here now, but burned down to isotopes of neutrons. All excess protons, electrons and other particles were freed. The energy released is enough to keep the atom-fire going, but there’s no excess heat. It all adds up!”

  “Yeah? Must serve some good corn-likker around these parts. Adds up to what?” The pilot kicked at the black dust with his toe.

  “To this—that no reaction, living or non-living, can continue in its own waste products!”

  And then, in the eyes of the cameraman, his young passenger did the queerest thing yet. He began throwing handfuls of the black powder into the cockpit of the plane, as though his life depended on it.

  “Hey, what’s the idea? I don’t want—”

  “Have you a wife and children in Chicago?” Nelson demanded.

  “Yeah, but what has that got to do—”

  “Then you’d better help me!”

  Nelson explained while he worked frantically. The pilot, a little pale, began helping.

  THEY were both covered with soot, an hour later, when their plane rose and soared out of the ring of ultraflame. Under Nelson’s directions, the pilot landed it in the wide field a mile from Tipler, wherein toiling men were erecting a wall of concrete. Trucks, tools and materials from a nearby PWA project had been boldly confiscated by Sheriff Mack, for this desperate measure.

  Nelson strode up to him.

  “Oh, the scientist chap.” Sheriff Mack’s voice was cracked from shouting orders. “You said there mightn’t be a way to stop that fire, but by God, we have to try, don’t we?” His eyes, reflecting a gaunt doom, gazed off at the approaching flame-curtain, a half-mile away.

  “We have to try, don’t we?” he repeated doggedly.

  “But this isn’t the way!” cried Nelson. “I told you—”

  The sheriff’s face turned livid. “Get away from here!” be snarled. “What do you want me to do, sit down and snivel?”

  “No, but I think there is a way!” Rapidly Nelson told of the neutronic ash.

  “Black powder—neutrons?” echoed the sheriff. “Sounds too much like a science lecture, young fella—”

  Nelson grabbed his arm tensely. “If they couldn’t put out a normal forest fire in any other way, they’d choke it off with ashes too, wouldn’t they? We’ve got to try it, anyway.”

  “You’re right!”

  The sheriff began barking orders. His men continued work on the concrete buttress, but he himself accompanied Nelson in a truck, after they had transferred the black powder from the plane into a bushel basket. They headed for the tall flames that cast a lurid violet light over the surroundings.

  They stopped a hundred feet away, and ran up with the bushel basket between them. They hastily made a ridge of the powder ten feet from the straight, sheer edge of heatless fire that crept forward steadily over sterile sandy soil. Then they fell back to watch, with electrical tingling all over their skins.

  The supernal atom-fire burned its way across the ten feet, met the neutronic powder—and stopped,! With an audible hiss, the flames that met the powder were quenched.

  “It works!” croaked Sheriff Mack. “Thank God—it works! Now we have to get all of that powder we can. I’ll phone the governor—send for airplanes, lots of them—”

  “No!” Nelson shook his head. “It would take too long that way. There’s more than fifteen miles of the fire-edge to bank with these ashes. The fire-edge is enlarging at a terrific rate. There’s only one way to beat time at this game—by going through
the fire-wall with trucks.”

  Sheriff Mack gasped. “But the trucks will burn—their gasoline—the men—”

  “Maybe not!” Nelson hissed. “There’s only a hundred feet or so of actual flame. And it isn’t hot flame. If trucks go through fast enough, like circus daredevils through hoops of fire, maybe—”

  “Maybe!” echoed the officer hopelessly.

  “There is only one way to find out!” Nelson was already running back to their truck.

  “Hey, you damn fool—”

  THE sheriff had to jump out of the way as the truck came charging down on the fire. Nelson sat grimly at the wheel. He had driven trucks one summer vacation to earn tuition fees. But he was driving one now for a far more important reason. Just before he came to the fire-wall, he crossed his fingers. Then suddenly all the universe around him was on fire.

  The truck tore on madly. Within the strange, cold curtain of ultra-flame, everything looked unreal, ghostlike, as a world viewed through swirling water. Nelson’s only physical sensation was one of lassitude. He almost felt like stopping and lying down to rest, as though he were very tired. But his foot continued to press the gas-throttle to the floorboard. The truck bounced over rocks and ruts, nearly jerking out of his hands at times.

  It seemed to take an age to get through the flame-curtain, though Nelson knew it was only seconds. Then suddenly clear sky greeted him. He stopped the truck well beyond the flames and looked himself and the machine over. There was no sign of burning, or anything akin to burning, anywhere. With a shout of triumph, he leaped back into the driver’s seat, turned the truck, and roared back through the flames.

  Sheriff Mack peered closely at him when he stepped out, on the other side. “Won through all right, I see. But you look older, son! It aged you—”

  “Never mind that!” snapped Nelson. “I want a dumping-truck now, the kind that tips its load at the back by a control in the driver’s seat. I’ll build a roadway of black ash through the flamering. A roadway free of flame. You’re going to get all your trucks going then, in and out of the flame-ring, along that roadway. Men must be stationed on the other side, to dig and fill the trucks. It’s going to be a big job, but we can win if we hurry—” He pulled the sheriff in the truck and shifted gears.

  They were back in a few minutes, at the ultra-flame’s edge, with a large but fast dumping truck. Nelson was the driver. In the back were ten men, grimfaced volunteers, carrying shovels. Nelson pushed Sheriff Mack out of the driver’s cabin, stopping at the flame-wall.

  “You’re needed here, to direct operations later,” said Nelson over the sheriffs protest. “No need for you to take chances—”

  Then the large truck roared into the curtain of pseudo-fire. Sheriff Mack watched it disappear like a ship lost in a tempest of swirling light. He waited, stepping back a little as the flame-wall crept forward in its relentless way. Would the young college student’s plan work? Or was there some unforeseen hitch to it? Sheriff Mack was troubled by the doubts that would plague any man facing that terrible, cryptic ultrafire that had never been seen on earth before.

  The truck flung itself out of the flames a half hour later with its load-carrier tipped. The last trickles of black powder were sliding from the rear end. The truck stopped and Nelson leaped out. He pointed back into the flame-curtain.

  “See that dark lane through the atom fire?” he said in a hoarse voice of triumph. “I’ve laid down a thin bed of neutron-ash. In two or three more trips I’ll have a flame-free lane wide enough for trucks to pass side by side!”

  “GOOD work!” returned the sheriff. “I’ll get several other dumping trucks on the job and make a roadway wide enough for ten trucks to pass—”

  He started to turn but Nelson caught his arm. “No, sheriff. Let me do it alone!”

  The officer stared. “But—”

  “Alone, do you hear?” Nelson almost shouted. Without waiting for an answer, he leaped into the truck and it rumbled back into the strange, cold flames.

  Sheriff Mack pursed his lips in perplexity. He knew young Nelson hadn’t suddenly gone mad. Nor was he the type to try grabbing a larger share of glory. There was some deep, earnest reason for his queer request. But exactly what?

  The sheriff broke from his thoughts and headed for his camp of operations at a lope. He must begin organizing the fleet of trucks for the big task ahead of them when the roadway was completed.

  When Nelson reappeared from the flames the third time, a line of trucks waited to plunge down the roadway he had made. It was like a black gash through the towering fire-wall. At a nod from Nelson, Sheriff Mack waved an arm and the caravan of trucks rolled along the flame-free pathway to the supply of neutron-ash beyond.

  “You look tired—better take a rest,” the sheriff said, putting a hand on the young man’s shoulder. He added, half dazedly, “And you look older again—”

  “I’m all right,” Nelson said gruffly. “Can’t rest now—must keep making the roadway wider so the trucks won’t be delayed.” His own truck was moving before the last word was out.

  Hour after hour flying vehicles shuttled back and forth. Men on the other side shoveled black dirt at a furious tempo. Men on the flame-threatened side piled it up in a continuous ridge. They cheered as they saw the ultraflame quenched. Then they went to work with redoubled energy. They were seized by a fanaticism that comes to men at a time like that—in the face of an enemy that must be conquered.

  Hour after hour.

  Men worked as they had never worked before, through the night. The trucks began dumping their black loads all around the huge circumference of the flamebelt. Cars, new and old, were volunteered, and commandeered, to serve in place of trucks where needed.

  Now and then flame seeped through a spot at which another truck-load of black dust would be dumped. Slowly the circle was being choked off . . . a menace to the world was being stifled that the world did not even realize existed.

  Hour after hour.

  Nelson drove his truck back and forth countless times, sleepless, driven by the same superhuman will that drove them all. They were working primarily to save their farms and families. Dan Nelson could only look at it in the larger sense—saving mankind.

  Now and then, Sheriff Mack would meet him. They would eye one another as two men recognizing sterling qualities in each other. But the sheriff would always peer closely then, and say the same thing, in a sort of wondering moan:

  “You look older, Nelson. Every time you come back you look older—and older—”

  At noon the next day, they knew they had won.

  “Well, it’s over!” sighed Nelson, slumping down on the running-board of his battered truck. “The atom-fire can’t burn down into the ground, for its own neutron-ash chokes it out. It can’t feed on air alone, for that fuel is too thin and will cool it below its ignition-point. The menace is over!”

  But the sheriff was groaning. “You’re an old man, Nelson! You look like an incredibly old man!”

  Nelson’s gaunt, wrinkled face drew up in a senile grin.

  “Yes, I aw an old man, because I went in and out of the flame-curtain many times, touched by the atom-fire. Old age is an effect of the cosmic-rays—bathing our bodies all our lives and slowly disintegrating them internally, filling them with isotopic poisons. I passed through that process in a few hours, in the bath of disintegrating flame. I lived a lifetime in there!”

  He went on softly. “I realized that from the start—but it was a small price to pay.”

  He turned to watch as the last flickers of mysterious atom-fire licked defeatedly against a bulwark of black powder. His old-man’s face reflected quiet triumph.

  THE END.

  [*] Neutrons, technically, are close combinations of electrons and protons, being electrically neutral. Harkins has suggested that the neutron is a new kind of matter with atomic number zero. It also can be compared to double-weight hydrogen atoms, which consist of one hydrogen atom and one neutron, thereby becoming electrically
stable. It has been estimated that a thimble-full of neutrons would weigh a million tons, since they do not push each other apart but lie compactly together. Therefore, it seems evident that the “neutronic matter” left as ash by this strange atom-fire, is not essentially completely neutronic in character, but more likely, neutronic isotopes of the consumed matter, that is, double-weight atoms, with a single neutron added to each atom of matter.—ED.

  THE JULES VERNE EXPRESS

  Around the Solar System in Ten Days! Follow This Exciting Argosy of a Future Magellan

  CHAPTER I

  Space Hop

  THE announcer’s voice vibrated with the excitement of the occasion. He was saying:

  “This is the Interplanetary Broadcasting System, bringing you a word-by-word description and televised view direct from Columbus Space Port at New York City. The Jutes Verne Express is about to take off on its record-smashing attempt.”

  He eased into less formal tones.

  “Things are about all set, ladies and gentlemen. The powerful engine of the Express has been warming up for a half hour. She’s a beautiful ship—beautiful! And these eyes have seen plenty of trim speedsters in their time. If looks count at all, she sure ought to make that hop around the Solar System in record time. Pilot Perry Howe has set his mark at ten days or less. He may make it!”

  Up on Pluto, four billion miles away, Royce Howe’s face glowed belligerently. He was the flyer’s older brother.

  “Of course, he’ll make it!” he half growled, looking around at the men of the outpost.

  His enthusiasm brought grins to their unshaven faces. Then he turned back to the television screen. The image was somewhat distorted by weakened signals—even the powerful anti-Heaviside carrier wave could not penetrate two such barriers, Earth’s and Pluto’s, without some powerloss. But the long, sleek ship showed clearly. Beyond the curve of the hull, in the background, milled the spectators behind a web-wire fence set up for precaution.