by Don Wilcox
At one o’clock the afternoon shift went into action. The continuous rumble of coasting capsules, the swoosh of sliding boxes, the relentless clank of the Iron Men, made this afternoon no different from any other, to all outward appearances.
Shortly after three o’clock, ten starchily dressed delegates from Oil Center walked into the visitors’ gallery, led by City Manager Ben Gleed. Here and there Gleed spoke to a workman or a guard. He hoped that his guests did not miss the point: City Manager and workman were on a common level. The spirit between them was democratic and friendly. Ben Gleed even wore a green workman’s uniform.
“This way, gentlemen.” Gleed led the delegation down a flight of steps to the engineers’ balcony. “This will give us a closer view of the mechanisms.”
Over doorways and along walls were such slogans as, “When Goods Stops Moving, Money Is Lost!”
“Keep it moving!”
“No trespassing on engineers’ balcony.”
“Keep this walk clean with dust absorbers.”
“Danger! Wear green or dark clothing only. Danger!”
“This, gentlemen, is the B-Hive,” said Gleed, as his party gathered by the railing. They stood within reach of one of the huge steel shoulders that thrust the Iron Man’s arm back and forth. They could smell the oil and feel the heat and see the crescent edges of the cluster of electric eyes that guided the powerful strokes.
“Nowhere in the world,” said Gleed, “will you find a plant which better illustrates the modern efficiency ideal—goods must never stop moving.”
Some of the men nodded, some exchanged envious glances.
“These capsules can load a freight train in ten minutes. That’s the reason the world snows us under with orders. The King of Egypt can radio us an order for air-freight delivery, and within fifteen minutes his order will pass through this B-Hive, shoot out to the freight field by pneumatic tube, and be on its way.”
The visitors murmured uncomfortably. One of them, fascinated by the ominous exhibition of power grinding away near his elbow, asked, “Are we—safe?”
“Of course,” Gleed retorted.
“We heard that a man was killed last night—”
“Correct. He got careless with his flashlight beam. It’s the same as walking into a speeding car. Regrettable. Unpreventable.”
“Could those damn things reach us up here?” The questioner looked down the long jointed steel arm to the glistening metallic fingers as they gracefully picked up a piano.
“They could,” Gleed smiled, “but they won’t. They only go where the operator’s flash beam makes them go.”
Gleed’s assurance didn’t entirely dispel the murmurs of worry. One dignitary took Gleed by the sleeve and said in a low voice, “Remember you’ve got a mayor and four aldermen and a director of health and sewers in this party. I hope you’ve warned your workers to be doubly careful with those lights.”
“They’ll be careful,” Gleed laughed lightly. The party moved on, past Iron Men numbers eight, nine, and ten. Over number eleven Gleed paused momentarily. Anger flashed through his face. “One moment, gentlemen, and I’ll be with you. Just move right on—”
Gleed stepped into a balcony doorway, motioned to a guard. “Get me Harrington.”
A few moments later Harrington, the small dark superintendent of engineers, came up briskly, scowling over a cigar.
“Harrington,” Gleed snapped, “what’s the meaning of this?” He jerked a thumb toward the operator of number eleven. “Isn’t that Holland, the night shift man?”
“That’s Jacobs’ doings,” said Harrington, “He sent both the day shift men home—sick.”
“Both! Then Holland—”
“Holland’s doing his third straight shift. Jacobs said no one else was available. Holland’s the only one that was up to it.”
“Three straight shifts—my stars! That’s suicide!”
Harrington nodded and sucked at his cigars, satisfied that this matter was outside his authority.
“We need to import more workers—”
“No time for that talk,” Gleed snapped. His eyes were watching the figure below him—Holland. The workman’s arms swayed with a practiced rhythm, the blue flash came and went, the Iron Man swiftly answered every order. But the subtle signs of Holland’s desperate fatigue were unmistakable.
“Harrington, take over that sight-seeing party for me—wait! What about the safety controls?”
“Snickson, the clean-up man, just now finished a round of the balcony, and I left him at the controls—”
“With instructions?”
“Yes—to cut off all power if there should be an emergency.” Harrington added with a hint of arrogance, “you don’t anticipate an emergency, do you, Mr. Gleed?”
“Certainly not.” The two men caught up with the waiting party, and Ben Gleed introduced Harrington. Inwardly he hated to entrust this delegation with Harrington; promoting friendship was not one of the tart little engineer’s specialties. However, the group received him cordially. Ben Gleed made a swift exit.
At the first telephone Gleed dialed for Jacobs.
“About Holland—this morning I agreed to let you fire him.”
“Well, I—”
“I gave you permission to fire him, not to murder him. Three shifts straight, Jacobs, that’s murder!”
“Hell, what could I do?” Jacobs complained. “The other men are scared of the machine. They’re scared of sabotage. After a day of rest they’ll get over it. And I figured if Holland was fool enough to keep going, we might as well get everything out of him we can before we—”
“Jacobs, that not Super City! You get over here and finish this shift yourself. That’s orders!”
“Me!”
“Report in uniform in fifteen minutes or you’ll be deported!’
Jacobs made it in ten. He went directly to the work station that Dan Holland had been holding down almost continuously for the past sixteen hours.
“You’re a pal,” Holland uttered weakly, placing the flashlight in Jacobs’ hand. Then the young operator, staggering, freight-drunk, relinquished his position and backed away.
In the shadow of the Iron Man’s moorings he paused, leaning against a steel girder. His eyes swept the scene. There were a few visitors on the upper balcony, as usual. That girl hurrying along the railing—the one in the green outfit with the red feather in the hat—must be Doris. Yes—she was looking for him.
What was she coming for, thought Dan. Did we have a date? No, nothing of the kind. She’s through with me. She’s lost faith. Damn, I’m dizzy. What time is it? Must be around three or four—
His thoughts were turned sharply by the sight of the Oil Center visitors trailing along the engineers’ balcony, the small dark figure of Harrington in the lead.
Then into Holland’s dizzy panorama of moving freight, streamlined balconies, a plodding delegation of sightseers, and Doris, came another detail—an unnatural sight that chilled his blood.
In the clutches of Iron Man number jive was a green-clad body!—swinging high!
The arms and legs of that body fought wildly. The workman’s screech pierced the noisy air. But Iron Men did not heed screeches, they only heeded light. By some freakish accident, perhaps, Iron Man number five was repeating the trick of Iron Man number eleven. It wedged its victim into the capsule of freight, clinked the lid, swooshed the capsule into the pneumatic tube—
Blang! Blang! Blang! The alarm bells set up a terrifying clangor.
Almost simultaneously Iron Man number eight swung down with savage action, hooked its claws around a green-uniformed operator! The operator dodged, squirmed, reached for the check lever. He wasn’t swift enough. The claw closed around him. He cried out. The flashlight fell from his hand.
At once everyone in the big room was in a panic. Death was striking—here, there everywhere. Number fifteen emitted a murderous cry as he was hoisted through the air. Number eighteen felt the check lever fly out of his fingert
ips as the blind power swung him aside, dumped him into a capsule. Swoosh—swoosh—swoosh! Off the capsules shot on their merry way to death!
“What the hell’s gone wrong?” Dan Holland roared. “Who’s on the safety controls?”
Dozens of other workers were shouting the same thing. They were dodging the grasp of steel fingers, ducking back out of sight of the electric eyes, fighting to reach for the check levers.
“Off with the power! Off with the power!”
Their shouts were less than cricket chirps, compared to the storm of steel and the rumble of piling-up freight.
Three swift impulses raced through Dan Holland’s mind, faster than three tracer bullets. The first was to find Doris. She was wearing green—and the wild Iron Men were suddenly going for green! BUt Doris was two balconies up—surely out of reach—
But there was the Oil Center group, huddled like sheep in a storm, on the engineers’ balcony. If the Iron Men went for them—God! What a scandal! Oil Center would have Ben Gleed up for murder! Why the hell didn’t Harrington chase them around to a door instead of just standing there helpless? On impulse, Dan Holland pictured himself scurrying up there and taking charge—
But the third impulse countered this plan. No, he would dash to the farther end of the big room, pull the safety switches, cut off the power!
Under the flashing of impulses Dan Holland stood paralyzed. The boldest action seemed too slow to combat this swift-spreading catastrophe—
“Dan Holland!”
The bark came from Jacobs. The freight was piling up on him. His flashlight hand was trembling and so was his voice.
“Holland! C’mere! Take over, dammit! Can’t you see—”
Holland turned to see what made the night boss check his speech and grow red in the face. All he saw was Ben Gleed flying past, bounding toward the farther end of the room.
“Help! Help! Holland!” Again it was Jacobs’ bark. Dan Holland saw the threat of death swoop down. He saw the tough fingers of Iron Man number eleven snatch the night boss around the middle, saw the red-faced man swing off his feet, ride toward the waiting capsule.
In that instant Dan Holland leaped out of the paralysis that had momentarily bound him. He struck the check lever squarely. Iron Man number eleven went dead, holding the squirming, kicking Jacobs in mid-air. There was something piteous about Jacobs’ cry; it was more a cry of outrage and fright than pain.
Then it changed to an angry bellow. Jacobs’ face went purple with rage.
“Holland, you scoundrel, get me down from here!”
Might as well bellow at a racing greyhound. Dan Holland was off on some weird mission of his own. Jacobs’ bugging eyes blinked and batted. What the devil was that young son-of-a-gun up to?
Whatever it was, Jacobs had a ringside seat—if hanging in the clutches of a dead Iron Man can be called a seat. He could see the wild rampage of Iron Men all over the industrial arena. He could see workers, less fortunate than himself, falling into capsules and shooting off into oblivion and death.
But the strangest thing that Jacobs saw was the dizzy, prancing chase of Dan Holland across the arena. The young workman ascended the outer edge of vast freight cone, turned with it, scampered over piles of freight crates like a human skyrocket, dashed down toward the rampaging Iron Men like a foolhardy warrior challenging a phalanx of monsters.
What was he shouting? Jacobs couldn’t hope to hear, but he saw one of the workmen answer by tossing Holland a flashlight.
Holland snapped the beam on, scrambling out of reach of an Iron Man. Then he did the strangest thing of all. He aimed the shaft of light squarely at the cluster of Oil Center men on the engineers’ balcony. He deliberately flooded them with light.
Two Iron Men answered that signal. Simultaneously the two powerful steel arms reached upward, claws ready. Closer—closer—so swiftly they plunged that not one of the men had time to cry out in protest—yet every man saw that the flash-beam that swept them was guiding the hands of death—
Blackness!
Upon the whole vast room it fell, as if the world had suddenly come to an end. Utter and complete blackness it seemed. Only after a moment’s adjustment to the change could Dan Holland’s eyes see the piercing shafts of light from the few flashlights that were still burning.
Everything stopped—all the motion, the pandemonium, even the cries of terror. The B-Hive’s power was off. Everything was at a standstill—everything except the incoming capsules of freight. Their gentle familiar rumble was as inexhaustible as the thunders of a great waterfall.
Colored flashlight beams shot to the center of the vast conical floor to reveal the inpouring Niagara of freight. Dan Holland saw the avalanche of heaped boxes topple, roll. He ducked, dodged, ran for the outer edge of the cone. The avalanche came too fast. He spilled, and the tide of boxes roared over him. . .
CHAPTER VI
Holland on the Carpet
“What a run!” muttered one of the white uniformed attendants at the Super City hospital. “Ben Gleed oughta give us an hour’s notice before he turns the city into a slaughter house.”
“Hell, Gleed never knew it was coming,” said the attendant at the other end of the stretcher. “It caught him right along with the rest.”
“No kiddin’.” They lifted another victim out of the ambulance.
“He’s down in seven-o-two, where you see all those reporters waiting outside the door. Yeah, he got sideswiped by an Iron Man. Shoulder and arm cut up a little. He passed out a couple times from loss of blood. It’s in all the papers.”
“The hell it is. I been too busy ridin’ the ambulance to see a paper. What do they say caused it?”
“Panic. That’s Harrington’s version. He’s one of the head engineers and he saw the whole thing. He lays it to a machine scare and too much pressure. Says the Holland case was the thing that set off the workers’ nerves.”
They rolled their first-aid patients onto an elevator. At the mention of the name “Holland” one of the patients, a tall young workman in a green uniform, opened one eye—the other eye was too black and swollen to open.
“The Holland case had nothing to do with it,” the patient growled. Then he reached into his coat pocket and fumbled for his pocket comb, but the attendants told him to take it easy and do no unnecessary stirring until that broken leg was set.
Later in the evening an attendant carted Holland into room 702.
“Here’s the man you asked for, Mr. Gleed. The doctors are through with him and he’s still got enough life in him to talk.”
Ben Gleed, propped up in bed, turned his sharp penetrating eyes on Dan Holland. He waited until the attendant had closed the door before he spoke.
“Holland, I can’t waste words.” Gleed’s voice was brittle. The pallor of his face, together with the cold light in his eyes, indicated that he had neither the strength nor the humor to be patient with anyone. “The tragedy and the humiliation of what has happened will stink to high heaven. You had a share in it, Holland.”
Dan Holland met Gleed’s glare, said nothing.
“You were slated to be fired. You knew it. Was that why you tried to wreak criminal revenge on Super City?”
“What revenge?” Holland asked through tight lips.
“Don’t hedge, Holland. The only way Super City can come out of this jam is through a swift shake-up in personnel. That shake-up will come in the next twenty-four hours—and it won’t miss you, Holland. Don’t try to deny what everybody saw. You deliberately directed death and destruction toward the Oil Center men, our guests!”
“Were any of them killed?”
Gleed noticed the tense eagerness in the young workman’s face. Fortunately, no.” Holland relaxed. “I thought not.”
“What are you implying?”
“Just this,” said Holland. “Those Oil Center men came to see our freight plant go into a log jam. They enjoyed the show as long as it was our workers getting smashed up. But the instant the danger turned on them
—well, someone on their side put a quick end to the dirty business by cutting the power off.”
Ben Gleed’s eyes narrowed and he gave a low painful groan. “That’s a long stab in the dark, Holland.”
“I’m beginning to see daylight, Mr. Gleed.”
“Daylight, huh?” Gleed contemplated the stern young face, the desperate eyes—one of them swollen and blackened. He noted the leg in the cast, a sharp reminder that this worker had risked his life for something.
For what? Ben Gleed was in no mood to trifle with traitors or fools or clever evaders. Within a few hours the knife of his purge would strike. It must cut clean. But before he could make head against the flood of suspicions he must find the answer to two questions: Who was the heroic person that had succeeded in cutting off the power, thereby stopping the catastrophe? What diabolical motive had led this man Holland to try to turn the catastrophe upon the Oil Center delegation?
Now, as Gleed studied Holland’s tense face and pondered his sharp remarks, both his questions took on an inverted relief.
“If you can see daylight through that black eye of yours,” said Gleed, shuffling to one elbow, “you might tell me what it looks like. Give me your own story, Holland.”
“Well—” Dan Holland hesitated. His story was long on hunches, short on facts, and studded with insubordinations. But what had he to lose? “I suspect Harrington was back of it.”
“Can you prove it?”
“No. No more than I can prove that Oil Center came here to see it happen. But when things went wild I noticed that Harrington didn’t lead the party away. He herded them into a corner and let them watch. Gave them an eyeful of Super City at her worst. Seemed to take for granted that they were safe from danger.”
“So you suspect Harrington.”
“Yes—of engineering the whole catastrophe, and of being the authority that has played Jacobs for a sucker. I think Jacobs is innocent. He’s just dumb enough to be a tool for a saboteur.” Holland breathed a little easier, having gotten a load of insubordination off his chest.
“You haven’t told me a thing yet,” said Gleed. “How was Jacobs a tool?”