The Collected Stories

by Earl

  Hale stood stunned. Trickery! Images! Three images had followed Laura. The Three had duped Hale with his own trick. Stark fear struck into Hale’s nerves. Here he was exposed, fifty feet from any concealment. Already, as he could see, guns were pointing his way. He would be shot down ruthlessly. A cannon was being hastily wheeled up to blast the shop out of which he had stepped.

  Realization had come a split-second after Laura’s warning. Hale’s thoughts leaped. He waved frantically at the Government gunners in concealed niches to cover him. They understood. The first burst of gunfire from the tunnel mouth brought a withering blast from the defenders in retaliation.

  Hale had instantly thrown himself and Laura flat. Energy charges hissed over their prone forms. Hale wriggled forward toward the horseshoe of shops, yelling to Laura to do the same. It was their only chance. As flat targets, they might escape being struck. . . .

  When they reached a store front, nearer than the one Hale had left, he realized a miracle had saved them. Only one charge had touched Hale.

  His left arm hung bloody and useless. But Laura was untouched. The Government gunners had kept the enemy gunners too busy to take careful aim.

  Just as Hale darted in the doorway to concealment, he heard the first thump of a cannon shot. The shop he had recently quitted, his laboratory, splintered into broken debris.

  The anesthetic ray projector was destroyed!

  CHAPTER XX

  Dawn of Tomorrow

  A HUNDRED yards back from the tunnel mouth, von Grenfeld peered through binoculars over the heads of the troops. His miniature craggy face turned triumphantly.

  “The first cannon shot destroyed Hale’s laboratory! His anesthetic ray projector is wrecked!”

  “What about Hale?” cried Gordy anxiously.

  “He escaped. Slipped into another store with Laura.”

  “We’ll get him later—alive!” Gordy exclaimed. “I want to see his face when I tell him how he was duped. He forgot I am a scientist, too. And he forgot that before he could bottle us up at the European end, we had five hours. Five hours in which we brought an image projector, which had recently been perfected, from the Syndicate laboratories. Our images weren’t as clear-cut and perfect as his, nor could they talk. But for our purpose, as decoys, they and Laura drew him out of his laboratory.”

  He looked down at the stripped body of Peter Asquith with a shot through its brain from Gordy’s gun.

  “In fact,” he grinned, “one of the images wasn’t even Asquith, if he had noticed. Just another man. in Asquith’s clothes. But I knew the young fool would be too love-blind over Laura to suspect.”

  “It was cleverly done,” nodded von Grenfeld. “Now I’ll issue the order to attack, as previously. With the anesthetic ray gone, our troopers can storm as planned. New Washington will fall to us!”

  The two men looked at each other.

  “Well, now there are just the two of us left of our original five,” von Grenfeld said in a low voice. “Two of us to rule Earth together.”

  There was almost a question in his voice.

  “Does there have to be two of us?” asked Gordy mockingly.

  For a frozen instant they stared at each other.

  “I thought so.” Von Grenfeld, pale and trembling, snatched for his holstered gun. But he knew he would fumble awkwardly, as he had been fumbling in all actions since his size had been reduced.

  The shot from Gordy’s gun stretched him beside the corpse of Asquith. Gordy glanced down a moment. Then he turned to issue the attack order that would make him sole dictator of Earth.

  He had no chance to give that order.

  As though it were a play given for the second time, the roar of battle died. In the tunnel ahead, the syndicate troopers dropped, eyes closing. The army lay asleep.

  And as before, Hale’s mocking image appeared.

  “I had a third anesthetic ray projector ready all the time—and a fourth and fifth,” Hale said simply. “The third was three store-fronts from the other, where I arrived after escaping gunfire. It also covers the total tunnel mouth. In all my campaign against you Five, for two years my plan was always to stay a step ahead. The situation is the same as before. When you are ready—and I see you are alone of the Five, Gordy—surrender.”

  The image faded.

  Gordy’s exposed face muscles sagged. Victory had again been snatched from him. Then a gleam came into his eyes, a deadly, fanatic gleam. . . .

  LAURA ASQUITH talked as she bound the wound on Hale’s left arm.

  “They forced me to go out with the images,” she explained in a strained voice. “Dr. Gordy threatened to shoot me if I didn’t. Peter Asquith, my uncle, objected. Dr. Gordy shot him dead.” She shuddered.

  Hale said nothing. At least, he reflected, Peter Asquith had died doing one noble thing. His treacherous nature had cleansed itself with a single unselfish act.

  “I would have let Gordy shoot me, too,” the girl went on dully, “before leading you into the trap. But he would have sent the images, anyway. You might have come out in any case. I thought perhaps I would be able to warn you. But you didn’t hear me.”

  “Do you know why?” Hale returned gently. “Because through my mind other words were ringing—glorious ones, about you—”

  Their lips met. To Hale, the bitterness of five years dropped away like dried scales.

  After a moment he straightened.

  “You were brave, dear, and nothing was lost. Gordy and his million useless troopers are bottled in the Tube. He’ll have to surrender. I’ve won.”

  The girl’s eyes were uneasy. “He’s not the kind to give up quickly. He is down there yet scheming—”

  Hale laughed, crushing her to him with his one good arm.

  Three hours later the girl’s uneasiness fulfilled itself.

  A government officer came to him with a portable visi-set and hastily connected it.

  “Call from the upper dome, sir!”

  Another officer’s face appeared in the visi-screen.

  “Something is descending from the sky!” His voice was worried. “It’s coming down directly toward the dome of the terminal.”

  “Turn your screen,” Hale barked. “Let me see it.”

  The screen’s view wobbled crazily as the outside iconoscope was turned upward. Then it settled. The wide sky was mirrored. Hale stared. A black globe was steadily enlarging, like a slow meteor. Instantly he knew what it was. He had seen it before, too much of it.

  “Strato-prison!” he gasped. “Strato-prison dropping down from its stratosphere position!”

  He tuned his spy ray screen. His movideo attachment projected his image before Dr. Gordy, in the tunnel.

  “Strato-prison is dropping,” began Hale.

  “Yes, I know.” Gordy spoke tersely, almost quietly. “When my lab men came down, before the European terminal was blocked I had them bring along a portable beam radio. With that I signaled Warden Lewis. He has always been my staunch but secret supporter. I told him to maneuver Strato-prison down. All the prisoners have been removed, and most of the guards, so that no rioting would occur. A skeleton crew, also my secret supporters, handle the generators. I gave him the plans long ago, for emergency. The zero-gravity field is being slowly withdrawn.”

  The scientist’s face gleamed.

  “Perhaps you realize, Hale, that Strato-prison is a mighty weapon. Or call it a bomb, a mighty, mountain-size bomb. Landing on the dome, even gently, it will crack the dome open like an egg-shell. Then, as its zero-gravity field is entirely released, its tremendous weight will crunch down. The entire terminal will be crushed—and you with it!”

  HALE felt Laura shuddering against him. His nails were digging into his moist palms.

  “I will escape, of course,” Gordy went on. “I and the troopers will be far back in the tunnel, out of harm’s way. We will dig our way out of the debris, perhaps in a week. We will emerge with Strato-prison still hovering as a threat over New Washington. If there is resis
tance, Strato-prison will crunch down on other buildings like a great hammer.

  “Strato-prison is too big to be destroyed. I thought of it years ago, as a way to gain my ends. But I saved it as a last resort—”

  Hale waited to hear no more.

  Face set, he raced for the elevators. The anesthetic ray projector would have to remain unattended. The new threat from the sky was the greater problem. Would he have time? Would he be able to reach the surface before Strato-prison arrived? Would he be able to use the small instrument he had carried in the past week?

  It was not till he was half-way up that he noticed Laura stood beside him.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he protested. “Any second, the whole terminal may crack about our ears.”

  The girl stood closer to him.

  “I wouldn’t have been any safer below. And if it happens, I want to be with you.”

  He squeezed her hand. He was glad she was with him to share that horrible moment—if it came. That horrible moment of tumbling walls and death would leave Gordy victorious. But it must not come! It must not!

  Hale tried to hurry the elevator, by sheer force of will. His veins throbbed sickeningly, wincing before a doom that might crack down at any given second. It was agony, that ride.

  But the doom did not come.

  Panting, Hale emerged on a balcony of the upper dome. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the Sun.

  The half-mile globe of metal hung like a gigantic moon overhead. No more than a mile above it was slowing down under its manipulators, would land in perhaps a minute. Its cosmic weight would make a shambles of anything it touched, even lightly.

  Laura turned her horrified eyes away. She clutched Hale’s arm.

  “We haven’t much time to escape—”

  Then she noticed that he had raised his unwounded right arm. In it he held a small tubular instrument.

  “Dick! What are you doing?” She tightened her grip on his arm wildly, thinking him mad.

  Hale shook her off.

  “I’m going to destroy it!”

  “With a pistol?” Laura knew now that he was mad.

  Hale pressed the trigger mechanism of the little instrument. With a slight zing a pellet, propelled by an AP cartridge, sped invisibly for the monstrous globe.

  Hale had made up his mind instantly. In destroying Strato-prison, he would be destroying the lives of Warden Lewis and his crew of men. But it must be done, for they had aligned themselves with Gordy. Strato-prison itself had no right to exist. Its prisoners, now on Earth, had been held in living-death.

  Hale did not know exactly how it would happen. He watched with the fascinated interest of the unknown. Alone of Dr, Allison’s secrets he had never tested it—had never dared. He only dared now, forced to do so by the emergency of the moment. He had hoped never to have to employ its awful power. Even down below, trapped before the guns, he had taken his chances against them rather than use the little firing-tube.

  WITHIN the pellet were two radioactive materials, separated by a partition of wax. At the impact, the wax would melt. The two radioactive specks would collide, merge, explode into a supernal spark. . . .

  The pellet struck seconds after its firing.

  The supernal spark flashed out like a diamond against the broad dull metal of the hull. It grew. Like a swift fire, it sent rills of incandescence around the hull.

  And the hull burned like paper! Hale had seen the old, preserved pictures of the hydrogen filled Hindenburg Zeppelin burning with numbing swiftness. But this was far swifter. One moment the gigantic globe hung solid and real. The next it was a puff-ball of black ash that billowed out in the winds and dispersed.

  The tiny spark of the pellet had lit an atom-flame, a flame that ran from atom to atom with the speed of light, and turned matter into the ash of dead neutrons. Dr. Allison had propounded that only a thinner medium, like air or water would stop it. Thank God, he had been right, Hale breathed, his nerves easing.

  A wave of heat thrust down from the vanished globe. It was like the blast of a furnace. Hale and Laura fell, lay in a pool of their own perspiration. Their skins turned almost a boiled red. Blood pounded in their ears till their brains reeled. For a long minute the tide of heat poured down from the sky, over them and over all New Washington.

  Then it stopped, and breezes cooled their tortured bodies. Laura was clinging to Hale’s arm.

  “It’s over,” she whispered. “That was Gordy’s last hope.”

  Yes, it was over. Five years of madness and revenge and struggle against the Five. A new tomorrow had dawned, for him, for Laura, for all the world. At last Dr. Allison’s treasures could serve their true use.

  All except the last weapon of pure destruction. Hale would never let the world know that secret. There was no place for it in the new Tomorrow.

  THE POISON REALM

  Terrance and Lona were just ordinary reporters—but theirs is a strange fate! Thrown into a far-flung world of another dimension, they face death in an alien jungle inhabited by horrible monsters—and the poisonous gases of the weird atmosphere crawl into their tortured lungs!

  “I WOULDN’T attempt to explain the nature of my experiments to anybody but a scientist—and a darned good one at that!”

  Terrance Hale stood his ground desperately. “But just tell me one thing, Dr. Vance. What is that tower affair on the roof for? Has it got anything to do with your theory of the Fifth Dimensional Continuum? What do you expect to do with it?” The scientist put his stained hands together in a pious gesture, but his expression was sarcastic.

  “From the mouth of babes,” he quoted. “Young man,” he continued, “when Einstein’s Theory first came out, only twelve men in the world were able to understand it. There are only two people who understand my new theory. I’m one. I haven’t found the other one yet. Now get out.”

  “But Dr. Vance—that tower!” pleaded Hale. He tried wheedling. “I’ve driven a hundred miles up here just to get some report for my sheet. You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you?”

  The elderly scientist glared. Then, in an earnest voice he said, “Let me give you a tip, son. Drive back that hundred miles and stay there. I’m going to try an experiment in an hour that may end—disasterously. If worst comes to worst, and you’re in the vicinity, you won’t have any job to go back to, to lose. Understand?”

  “But tell me—”

  Vance literally exploded. His white mane flew up as he jerked his head violently and threw up his arms. “Will you go!” he shrieked. “Or shall I have my assistant throw you out? Hans—Hans—”

  The assistant, Hans, came running up from the other side of the laboratory. He was even smaller and scrawnier than the scientist.

  Hale grinned at the thought of being “thrown out,” but shrugged and left, realizing he had overstayed his welcome by far. The irascible scientist, at the eve of some dangerous experiment, was not a man to interview. Perhaps after the trial, he would feel like crowing about it, if it worked. Terrance Hale decided to stay around for that possibility. His boss had sent him up for Sunday supplement material and Hale would hardly dare go back without something.

  He drove his wheezy old car away and tooled it down the rutty road that led toward the county highway. Why had the scientist picked such a God-forsaken spot? He had had all his apparatus and supplies trucked up here at tremendous cost. It seemed like a crack-pot stunt.

  But Dr. Vance was no crack-pot. He was the man of the hour in science, a trail-blazer into the unknown. A second—and perhaps superior—Einstein. Two years before, after announcing his amazing Fifth Dimensional Continuum Theory, he had moved his laboratory up here into practically deserted regions. But why? That was the question everyone asked, but no one had found the answer to. The scientist had become mighty close-mouthed about it. Was his brilliant genius about to scintillate with something still more astounding than his first theory?

  Hale reflected that it might be so. When out of sight of the laboratory, b
ehind a growth of stunted trees, he parked his car at the side of the road and got out. He lit a cigarette and sat on the running board in the morning sun. At least he would get a tan.

  A FEW minutes later he jerked up his head and listened. Another car was coming up the road. It appeared around the bend, jouncing uncomfortably for its driver, and came to a stop near Hale. The young woman that stepped out was slim and graceful, her hair a golden blaze in the sunlight. Hale liked her instantly, in the quick way he had of forming his opinion of people. For one thing she had blue eyes, and he had always had a weakness for blue eyes.

  “Is this the right way to Dr. Simon Vance’s place?” she asked, standing on the running board and looking around doubtfully.

  “It is, Miss,” nodded Hale. “Right around these trees. Do you have an appointment to see him?” He was already thinking of striking a bargain with her, if such was the case.

  The girl shook her head. “No. I’m on the staff of Science Forum Magazine, sent up here to get some material from Dr. Vance for an article.”

  “Oh,” said Hale. “Don’t think you’ll get it, sister,” he added laconically.

  The girl stared frigidly at him. “Why not? Who are you, anyway, and why do you say that?”

  “Terrance Hale, m’am, of the Journal. Call me Terry.” He then related his experiences in trying to interview the scientist.

  The girl snapped her fingers when he was done. “I’ll get an interview.”

  “Or your name isn’t—?” prodded Hale, as the beginning of an acquaintance he had already made up his mind to promote.

  She hesitated, looking him over. “None of your business,” she said airily. “It might be Lona Darson,” she added, climbing back into her car.

  “Pleeztameecha,” said Hale. “But if you get anything out of him, you’re a better man than I am.”

  “Not man—woman.” The girl smiled. “Did you ever hear of feminine wiles, Mr. Terrance Hale?” She drove on.

  “Lona Darson,” Hale murmured to himself. “Lona Darson—dum-de-dum—fits in with a song—” For the next five minutes he hummed the song, till the roar of the returning car interrupted him. It zoomed up recklessly and stopped just beyond his car with squealing brakes.