by Don Wilcox
“Fortunately, that fiend is dead. So is the fiend of DEADLOCK. When they died, New London was born,
“But the silly phantom fiend that someone created never existed. I saw the Williamson family’s tragic accident. There was no fiend except a soft tire that threw the car over the embankment. The car was not stalled; it was in motion.
“Consider the ingenuity, if you will, that went into the invention of this silly bogey. The fiend was said to attack only persons who were not moving. The commercial motive back of this lie is as clear as daylight. Buy cars—buy auto-houses—buy gasoline and oil. Keep moving to save your lives—and incidentally pile up profits for some American corporation.
“Tonight you were persuaded to come and sit here because towers of guards protected you. Let me confide a secret. Those uniformed figures in the towers are only dummies. You have been sitting for more than two hours—completely unmolested, I believe, by any bloodthirsty monstrosities—”
Something moved disturbingly among the model buildings of the miniature New London. A small section of the structure heaved upward, folded back, revealed a huge lizard-like figure coming up out of the ground. It rose up on two feet.
Screams and gasps cut through the sea of gaping spectators. But above the startled outcries sounded the gutteral, flesh-chilling, soulless screech of the monstrous lizard.
“Who next, Gleed? Who next?” The coarse voice screamed it over and over.
Fully four-fifths of the vast audience sat tight, mystified or suspicious. The other fifth broke into terror-stricken panic. But there was no use to run. The monster was not moving toward the audience, he was plodding straight for the speaker’s platform.
“It’s a fake!” Ben Gleed yelled into the microphones. “Fake! Fake! I’ll fight it single-handed.”
But there was too much pandemonium for anyone to be swerved by words. Ben Gleed flung off his coat.
The monster turned around for a look at the audience, displaying his ice-cube teeth, his glowing red eyes. He waved his leather ribbons of arms threateningly and again the terrorized screams swept through the stadium.
Both Gleed and Bronson Black were racing toward the monster. But certain husky men in the front rows were closer. They leaped down and grappled with the monster before anyone else had a chance. Six of them pounced at once. The monster went down, wobbling his head, uttering a bloody shriek that choked off as he fell.
Then, like clockwork, the six men grabbed up the prone monster, carried him out of the stadium grounds with a rush that was dazzling. The frantic, screaming fifth of the audience broke into wild cheering. But the undertones were groans and harsh mutterings.
“Members of my R.A.F. squad,” Bronson Black barked into the microphones. “Meet me at the east gate. Let’s explode this thing.”
Black was off like a bolt of lightning. The men who had played hero and rushed the stunned fiend off the field had tossed him into a waiting car, the headlights of which could be seen whirling across the hill road toward the highway.
Other men had rushed down from the stadium seats with a show of bravery, and some of them now leaped for the microphones.
“You heard what that fiend said,” one of them yelled. “He asked Gleed whom to kill next. He’s Gleed’s pet. Gleed brought him to England. Let’s mob Glee—”
Thump. Amplified by the stadium’s loudspeakers, Gleed’s short left to the man’s jaw sounded like a locomotive collision.
“Mob Gleed! Mob Gleed!” The shouts rang out from fifteen or twenty men as they rushed out to the speaker’s platform. In the face of that onrush Ben Gleed heard Mary Armstrong’s stifled cry of fear. Bronson Black was gone. John Kandenfield was thinking of going. The bristling little Estep was scrapping for a microphone, shouting, “Frame-up. Are you going to let these hoodlums get away with it?”
Several hundred staunch English citizens looked down upon the floodlighted model London and decided they weren’t. They marched down in a spontaneous citizen’s army. By the time they reached Ben Gleed, his fists had accounted for five of the mobsters but he was being sandbagged by six more. The citizen’s army nabbed some of them, chased the others off the grounds.
Ben Gleed flung his tousled hair out of his eyes, leaped back to the microphones.
“Thanks,” he panted. “Looks like you’re through with being gullible. I guess you’ve had you fill of being preyed on by schemesters. I congratulate you.”
Then Ben Gleed, catching sight of the squirming owl-eyed executive secretary, unleashed his suspicions, pointed an accusing finger at Webb. “Your mob didn’t come off, did it, Mr. Webb? The English people didn’t fall for your lynching scheme.”
Gleed’s accusations boomed through the loudspeakers, and so did Webb’s stammered denials. But Ben Gleed’s fighting spirit was up. He grabbed the executive secretary by the shoulders, jerked him up to the microphones.
“Tell them why you cut into my broadcast!” Gleed growled, shaking the fellow until his head flopped like a punching bag. “Tell them why you invented a fiend to make them buy cars—”
“Stop it! Stop it!” Webb howled. “Tell them why you clogged the planning committee. Tell them why you rigged up a fake fiend to break in on this meeting—”
“Wait! Stop! Don’t—”
Bronson Black and some of his fellow veterans sped into the stadium grounds in a car decorated with flapping leather arms, a false face with teeth like ice cubes, an empty lizard costume, a headdress of fish fins. The car roared up to the speaker’s platform under an uproarious cheer. Black vaulted out and bounded up to the microphones.
“Is anybody scared of that lizard outfit?” he yelled, and the stadium rocked with laughter. “The hoodlum that wore it, and his pals that carted him off said they’d leave all the talking to our friend Mr. Webb.”
“Talk fast, Webb!” Ben Gleed snapped. “Tell them why you’ve been opening my mail.”
“It was all my own idea,” said Webb, and he began to fabricate cotton-candy excuses. He talked fast. His voice grew tight. It was the same voice that had once cut into Gleed’s broadcast. Bronson Black and several thousand other listeners would have known it anywhere.
“That will do,” said Gleed, cutting in abruptly, for he had just glanced into a cablegram a messenger had handed him. “Don’t strain yourself any farther, Mr. Webb. I’ll straighten your story out.”
The blinking executive secretary mopped his brow and retreated to his seat.
“Once upon a time, ladies and gentlemen,” said Ben Gleed, half-smiling at the ironic news he was about to deliver, “an industrial city named Oil Center became jealous of Super City, and resorted to unscrupulous methods to outdo Super City’s success. I have just learned that the Mr. Webb, who a moment ago tried to take all the credit—or blame—for the roving mania—came to you during the war as the secret representative of Oil City.
“Mr. Webb’s job was to make sure that New London’s most profitable dollars went to Oil Center. How well Mr. Webb has done for his city you may judge for yourselves. The joker is, that riding around on wheels doesn’t pay bills. This cablegram informs me that Oil Center is on the verge of economic collapse.
“Do you think the fiend is dead? You’ve had a joyride. Oil Center will expect you to pay for it. I wish you luck, but I predict that the ghost of this fiend will haunt England for a long time to come. Good night.”
Souvenir seekers raced down from the stadium to clamor for bits of the fiend costume the minute the meeting ended; but for the most part the thronged thousands were a fairly quiet and thoughtful group as they departed. At least that was the impression that commentators gave out to radio listeners all over the land.
“You were wonderful, Mr. Gleed,” said Mary Armstrong. “Next to Bronson you’re about the most remarkable person I know.”
“Bronson’s not too disappointed over that?” Gleed pointed to the surrounding model of New London.
“He’s as thrilled as I am,” the girl laughed. “He’s promised me a
little penthouse on top of a skyscraper.”
After Ben Gleed had thanked Black, Kandenfield, and Estep for their fine support through the hour of crisis, he turned to see the disconsolate figure of Vernon Webb sitting on the model railway station with his feet in the Thames. “Waiting for a train?” Gleed asked. “Mr. Gleed,” said Webb plaintively, rubbing his sore neck, “Oil Center can’t even send me money to come home on—and I’m not safe here—”
“If it’s any help I’ll buy you a rowboat—or a freighter passage to—say, Africa or—”
“Africa’s okay, Mr. Gleed,” said Webb. “Just some quiet little cannibal village . . .
THE PERFECT TRAP
First published in Amazing Stories, April 1942
Not a soul in the World knew of this cave, and then it became a trap. There’d be no rescue!
“Get back under the canvas, Doormat!” I puffed at the smart-faced feline. “I’ve got this old handcar up to full speed, and I’ve got no breath for you. What’s the sniffing about? You had two mice at midnight, just before we started down this spur line. You can’t be hungry.” Then I knew. It was the sea breeze. My pet cat had caught a whiff of dead fish. It beats all how sensitive a cat can be. And how many idiosyncrasies it can have. Maybe the smarter the cat is, the more peculiarities it has. Doormat had learned to sleep straight through the bombing attacks, even the close ones that practically split your eardrums. But the instant something with a mild perfume, such as a dead fish, tickled his smeller, he was right up on his pads.
“Stay in the handcar, Doormat!”
In another minute we’d be at the end of the line. There was no time to lose.
For months and months there had been no time to lose, but it was never truer than at this particular dawn.
The old sea was plumb lost. There was nothing out beyond the sloping sand but pea soup. I could barely make out a colorless cliff and a hint of the intake channel that Old John Ingerlusk built. Poor Old John. You never know where these damned bombs are going to strike next.
If it had to be one of us, it should have been me. John should have lived to see this big job through. It was all his invention, none of mine. But I was sure as hell going to try, just like he told me.
Now the handcar was on the downgrade to the end of the spur. The steel wheels clattered over the ties with a fresh burst of speed. I let go the handlebars and they kept right on pumping. That mystery must have been too much for Doormat. He drew his head back under the canvas.
There was the old power station, nosing out of the mountainside, just like we’d left it two days ago.
We! Old John and I . . . But I didn’t dare let myself think of him any more. I have to keep up this fight of the last forty-eight hours, keep talking to myself like a fool, anything to hold my mind on the job—the job he’d almost completed—the job I might haze up if I wasn’t careful.
That job was to make falling bombs dodge out of their paths and explode where they wouldn’t do damage. Nobody but an eccentric inventor like Old John Ingerlusk would have had faith that it could be done. And it hasn’t been done yet. But the bombs that fell two nights ago must have had a premonition that it was about to be done. So they plummeted down and got Old John . . .
While the handcar coasted to a stop I beat my hands together. They were stiff from pumping. Cold, too. In no shape for a delicate fitting job. It would be a tragedy to chip or mar this precious chunk of metal. Old John’s measurements, of course, would be accurate to the ten-thousandth, and he said the expansion and contraction for temperature changes was already taken care of. So I knew I wouldn’t have that to worry about. But I might have to do a little sanding—or filing. “The irony of it,” I kept saying to myself, and I wasn’t making a pun on iron filings. I was thinking of this chunk of rare alloy. After the sizeable fortune Old John had had to pay, and all the red tape it had taken to get the magnesium through the government, what a waste it would be if I had to file an ounce of it off to make the core fit.
Now I was inside the big latticed steel gateway of our power station with my handcar and my precious cargo. I was careful to wrap the alloy core with cloth and canvas, and tie the wrappings on before I applied the hoist.
Doormat scrunched back toward the wall at the surprising sight. The hoist lifted the massive metal, slowly, deftly. Even a cat can’t help admiring such a demonstration of controlled power. It’s a cinch Doormat couldn’t have lifted a baby kitten any more tenderly, even if he’d been a mother.
The hoist hung from a steel track overhead, so it was an easy matter for me to pull the loaded hoist along by hand power. I drew it through the long, low-roofed entrance passage into the big half-empty work room beyond.
This spacious, rock-walled room was cut deep in the hillside, and Old John had considered it an ideal place for a secret experiment of this kind. He had set up his small model here originally, and I had watched it work. And how it worked! If its success was any indication. I knew this big number would swerve bombs and falling shells like an autumn wind swirls leaves.
Yes, this new magnesium alloy, as Old John had told me many a time with a significant wink, would out-pull any other electromagnetic core like the sun outshines a candle!
That was Old John’s faith, and now it was mine.
I dropped the hoist chain and went to turn on some lights. It was just dark enough, back in this big room, that I could stir up a spark on Doormat’s back, rubbing him the wrong way. Darned if that cat wasn’t good for a few volts of static electricity even on damp days.
The eastern sky was brightening by this time, however, and as I looked back through the straight-walled entrance passage, I debated momentarily whether I should go back and swing the big steel latticed gates closed. But I knew perfectly well that no one would ever intrude.
As I snapped on the lights I recalled the day I had helped Old John hoist those latticed steel gates and hinge them in place. Old John had said they would keep invaders out if war ever came, and besides, they would give us a regular checkerboard of holes to shoot through.
Now we were up to our necks in war—only five years since he had said it; but this place didn’t tempt bombers any more than a straw-roofed pig shed. And the reason was simple enough. Not even our own friends had discovered that we had got our tidal power scheme to work. As far as the public knew, this place was nothing but a mass of steel and stones thrown together by a fanatical inventor.
A few of Old John’s business associates had seen the plans on paper; but to them it was simply Ingerlusk’s folly. They had never bothered to come to see the place, and he knew they never would.
That was the beauty of this location. Never an intruder. This was a bit of lost coast. The isolation wouldn’t have been any more complete out on the Sahara Desert.
And the tides that furnished the power for this plant couldn’t have been any better anywhere.
I’ve no doubt the enemy had every other powerhouse in the country charted as a war objective. That’s where Old John was wise to let people think he was a fool. If they’d known how smart he was, the news of his experiment would have leaked out and he’d never have got this far with it.
How they used to rib him! “Power for the tides?” they’d jeer. “You’re cockeyed. You’ve got your source of power only six or seven hours at a stretch, at best. The rest of the time you’ll have to depend on a coal-burning plant.” And Old John would say, “Maybe so, maybe so.” Then they’d say, “If you’re going to have to build a coal-burning plant big enough to carry the load, why waste your fortune harnessing the tides?” And Old John would shrug and say, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m a damned fool and a tinkerer.” But he always went right ahead with his dream, undisturbed.
The generators were humming now. High tide or low, they went right on, always the same. For Old John Ingerlusk had fought his way through that wad of knots and had come out with the cleanest, surest constant pressure device that ever went into action.
I went into the turbine
room, Doormat following at my heels until we got within sight of the sparks in the first softly singing generator. Doormat stopped. I never had to tell him to keep back. He seemed to have an instinctive distrust of sparks from any source other than his own back. And he had an aristocratic aversion toward being told something he already knew—which, in this case, was to stay behind while I checked the oil cups. So he pretended, as usual, to have been distracted by the shallow pool of seepage on the concrete. He lapped up a little water, circled around the pool disdainfully, and settled down in a dry corner to wash his face. By the time I was ready to go back he had finished and was marching along a step ahead of me.
A streak of sun was piercing the spacious workroom, reminding me that the minutes were slipping away. My hands were no longer too cold for the job ahead. They had gathered warmth from the generators. The slight trembling of the fingers was nothing but nervousness.
I operated the hoist chains and the vast alloy core rode downward toward the gigantic electromagnet. The huge gleaming instrument was planted as solidly as Gibraltar in the central section of the concrete floor, and it was ready in every detail except for the insertion of this alloy core. Its thousands of wrappings had already tasted a test current, each section of the coiled wires having been tested separately. I could never forget the strange half-comical look on Old John’s face when he had begun to guess the extent of this magnet’s drawing power.
That was when he had changed his plan about mounting the instrument on a special track. He had decided that this final test would be simplified by planting the magnet in the floor to make it absolutely stationary. So the heavy rails we had procured to extend our railroad track straight into the work room had not been used. We had stored them overhead, over two ceiling crossbeams and jute-ending against a third, where they would be reasonably secure and out of the way for the test.