THE GREEN RAY
CHAPTER I
The Weapon
You’ve been working too hard, Greg,” Dean Thorkel, chief editor of New York Newscast Central said. “This Paris trip will set you on your feet.”
Professor Gregory Vance stared at his friend out of glowing eyes.
“I’m not going to Paris, Dean,” he said quietly. “Maybe by tomorrow I won’t be able to go anywhere.”
The atmosphere of the white-tiled laboratory was suddenly heatless with the chill of some brooding dread.
“Not going!” The newsman gasped. “Passing up the Einstein Award Convocation! Hell, man! When it was announced in nineteen ninety-six you told Cliff Hoskins and me you would devote your life to winning it. That’s why you’ve been slaving here at National U. for seven years while I’ve been keeping an eye on seven seas and five continents, and Cliff’s been risking his life in the Military Intelligence. You?”
“Risking his life.” The words trickled from between the scientist’s white lips. “Risking—” A sharp burr cut him off, the attention call of the wireless teleautograph in a corner of the lab. He twisted—and then his voice was a thin thread, wire-edged with terror. “There it is again!”
Thorkel leaped to the machine whose silver pencil danced eerily across white, unrolling paper. “Vance!” The salutation was abrupt. “Final warning. You speak before you reach Paris, willingly or—unwillingly.”
The newsman, his massively sculptured countenance chalky, whirled to the disc of a verbal communications transmitter, but Vance’s hand closed on his shoulder.
“No use, Dean,” the physicist whispered. “I’ve tried to trace those messages before. He taps in from some unauthorized station of his own, and it can’t be located.”
“But—but—who?”
“Ho-Lung.”
“Good Lord!” Thorkel breathed the exclamation. “He?”
Vance’s thin lips quirked in a humorless smile.
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Who hasn’t. He’s the lone-wolf ace of the Asiatic Secret Service. He’s got ears and eyes everywhere. He’s killed more enemies of the Yellow Coalition than their armies. But no one knows who or what he is. Sometimes I think he’s a myth. But you’re no soldier or diplomat. What can he want of you?”
“Want of me?” Gregory Vance’s slim white hands curled into curiously ineffectual looking fists. “I’ll show you.”
He moved to the lab table, lifted a cylindrical graduate from the stone slab of the laboratory table. From shelves on which hundreds of bottles were ranged, each labeled with a number only, he selected a half dozen vials. He carefully measured their contents into the etched glass until he had a liquid compound that was purplish and fuming. Somehow it seemed alive in the cold light of the beta-argon bulb in the ceiling.
The physicist picked up a lens-shaped but hollow crystal, dripped the solution he had concocted through a tiny opening until it filled the cavity. Then he fitted the lens he had made over the miniature bulb of an ordinary flash-light.
“Get down one of those cages with a white mouse in it, and place it on the table.” Thorkel obeyed.
“Watch!” Vance aimed the flashlight at the cage, pressed the button. A green beam flashed out, uncannily bright even in the mock daylight of the windowless room. It struck the mouse. An exclamation of horror escaped from the newsman.
An instant before the tiny animal had been there, instinct with life. Now—a glittering, viscid pool of iridescent oil glittered at the bottom of the cage!
The virescent light clicked out. Vance extracted the lens that had converted an ordinary flashlight into an instrument of annihilation, smashed the glass in the sink, watched the purple liquid disappear, fuming, down the drain.
“Imagine searchlight beams fanning that green ray through the skies and over the seas, trapping the oncoming hosts of an enemy and melting them, melting human beings into oily nothingness as that mouse was melted.
“Imagine their rocket-ships dropping uncontrolled from the heavens, their surface craft colliding, sinking into a boiling sea. What price invasion then?
“And all that is needed to make the weapon ready is the compound to fill the hollow lenses. Every glass factory in the country is now busy casting for the searchlights with which our coasts are lined, for the aircraft beacons which dot the continent.
“But—but how can mere light produce such an effect?”
“It’s simple. You know that matter is the result of a disturbance in the sub-ether, just as light is a vibration of the ether. And that ether and sub-ether are intimately interconnected. I have discovered a light vibration that steps up the vibrations of material atoms one micron. It transmutes elements, in other words. It acts only on organic matter, so far—transmutes the elements of any living body to others a little higher in the scale. And that?”—Vance nodded at the oily pool that had been a living thing moments before—“Is the result of the transmutation. Now do you know why Ho-Lung has been after me for weeks?”
“For weeks!” Thorkel exclaimed in surprise. “But—your life hasn’t already been attempted. Surely I should have heard.”
“No,” the other replied. “He wants the secret for his country. The ray is as formidable a weapon of offense as of defense. His messages have taken me up on high mountains and offered me the earth and the fullness thereof. He has resorted to threats only in the past week, as I neared perfection.”
“Neared perfection! It looks pretty damn perfect to me.”
“The effects, yes. But adjustments are necessary so that the target of the ray may not be shielded. My ray will penetrate any material except a certain ferro-beryllium alloy. Unfortunately, that alloy is the very one used to armor the Oriental rocket ships. I am on the track of the solution. In a few days I hope to have it. Otherwise—the thing is useless.”
“But the Army laboratories! Surely they must be helping you on this. You must have given them some idea of the thing, so that they should be able to proceed if anything should happen to you.”
“No. The War Department has ordered the hollow lenses purely on blind faith in me. The basic principle of the ray is known by myself alone. Our service is honeycombed with spies.
“Cliff Hoskins flew in from Manchukuo six months ago. Just a week before that I had got in touch with the War Secretary and given him in strictest confidence the barest outline of what I was working on. Three days later, Hoskins, eavesdropping on a conference of the Asiatic General Staff, had heard a full report of every detail of my talk!”
“Then if you are killed the whole thing is lost.”
“Wiped out!” Vance’s hand erased a chalk mark on the table-top. “Like that. If they can get the formula from me, well and good. But as soon as they are convinced that I will not yield it to them they will make sure the American Government does not get it either. That is why I cannot go to Paris, why I must hide. I have a place prepared, and I can get there unobserved. I shall show you how later. There is only one chance in a hundred of their getting me, once I’m away, but I want to guard against that one chance.”
Vance pulled a paper from his pocket, handed it to Thorkel. The other saw figures at the top, map co-ordinates of some point in the Far North. Then there was a long line of curious symbols, symbols that were vaguely familiar.
“The location of my hiding place,” Vance explained. “And the formula, in our old code.”
Thorkel remembered. How clearly that brought back the old student days, when he, Greg, and Cliff Hoskins had been inseparable. Hoskins had been reading treatises on cryptography and had challenged the other two to devise a code he could not decipher. They had accepted, and won. Hoskins had accused them of being unfair when he learned that three keywords were necessary to the solution.
“The keywords are these.” Vance wrote three words on a bit of paper, displayed them to Thorkel, then tore the scrap of paper into tiny fragments. “You know how much depends on the safety of that formula. If you don’
t hear from me within a week, take it to the Secretary of War—to no one else.” Greg gripped Thorkel’s arm, his fingers digging deep in emphasis. “Remember, Dean, give the formula to no one else, whoever he is, no matter what the circumstances.”
Vance turned to the door. “Now come out to the hangar with me and I shall show you how I shall get away, literally unseen.”
CHAPTER II
The Stolen Cipher
Dean Thorkel strode through the high-ceilinged dispatch room of New York Newscast Central, his heels clicking sharply on the rotunda’s marble floor. He was oblivious of the intermingled voices of the announcers droning to a million listeners their running commentary on the televised picturing of world events. He climbed stairs to his bright metal desk atop a raised platform at the center of the hall. Beneath his chestnut thatch his brown eyes were almost black with foreboding.
“Good morning, Mr. Thorkel.”
“Morning, Haley. How’d the night go?”
“Fairly smoothly, sir.” Randall Haley, night editor, was short, emaciated, completely bald. His tiny eyes, uncannily bright behind slitted, lashless lids; his sharp, hooked nose, gave him the appearance of a bird—a vulture. “The Aurora Borealis is kicking up again and Transcontinental Air’s Arctic refueling fields are cut off. But nothing ever happens up there.”
“All right. I’ll take over.” Behind his expressionless features a band seemed to constrict about Thorkel’s brain. The electrical disturbance might last for days. Suppose Greg wanted to communicate with him—. He grunted vaguely. Sinking into his swivel chair, he bent as if to fasten the lace of his shoe. There was the slither of steel on steel, barely perceptible. In a moment Vance’s cryptic formula was safe in a secret drawer.
Thorkel straightened, switched the foot-square monitor screen before him to the wave-length of a newscopter that hovered above the hundred-story Science Tower of National University.
On the screen’s shimmering surface a tiny figure emerged from the penthouse laboratory where, to quote the Einstein Award Citation, “science has leaped forward a century in five years.” It moved to a blue, toylike one-man gyrocopter that had been rolled out of its hangar.
“Professor Vance is entering his ’copter, folks,” the reporter’s voice droned. “In seconds he will take off—”
“Mr. Dean Thorkel, I believe,” suave tones drawled from the stairhead. Thorkel twisted around.
“Cliff Hoskins, you tramp,” he roared, jumping up. “Where the hell did you drop from?”
The stocky, dark man in quiet gray came across the platform.
“Hell’s right,” he responded, low-toned. “I tried to get here in time to slap old Greg on the back before he left for Paris, but skin-friction held my rocket plane up and I’m too late, I—”
“You’re just in time,” Thorkel snapped. “He’s taking off. Look.” He turned back to the screen.
The imaged plane blurred as its vanes gathered speed. It lifted from the roof, gained attitude in vertical ascent—and vanished!
“My God!” the reporter cried. “That wasn’t a static blot, folks. Professor Vance is—gone. Blotted out, I can’t see his plane anywhere.”
Low words thudded from Thorkel’s lips. “It works. By all that’s holy, it works!”
“What works, Dean?” Hoskins questioned. “What’s happened to Greg?”
“He’s skipped. He’s putting himself out of harm’s way until he finishes his job.”
“So you know about that!” Cliff Hoskins slid the seat of his trousers onto the desktop. “Where did he go?”
“Sorry, Cliff. I can’t tell even you.”
“But you know. It’s on something hidden in your desk.” The Secret Service man grinned. “It’s okay with me, Dean, but you want to be more careful. You looked down just then. That was a dead give away. An Asiatic spy would not have missed it.”
Thorkel, startled, swiveled about to where Haley, behind him, was washing up. The little man’s face was a mass of soap suds; he could have heard, seen, nothing.
“I’ve got about a half hour to chin with you,” Hoskins said. “Then I’ve got to get back to Manchukuo. Big doings there.”
For thirty minutes the Intelligence man told a rapt listener of an East buzzing with activity, of new explosives by the hundred thousand tons pouring from smoking factories, of vast arrays of rocket planes and hordes of surface-craft, of all the gigantic thunderbolt Asiatica was forging to launch at America, the only nation strong enough to resist the Mongolian dream of world domination.
“I tell you, Dean, we haven’t a ghost of a show unless Greg comes through. Even then—” Hoskins shrugged. “But I’ve got to go.” He rose, then paused. “Say—I may have to get in touch with you, in a hurry. How?”
Thorkel reached for a memorandum pad, jotted some numbers on it. “Here’s the wave-length combo of my private line. I’ve just changed it. Greg’s the only other who knows it. That’ll be the safest for you to use.”
Hoskins took the slip, studied it briefly.
“This may be foolish, but it’s a habit,” he said. He grinned, crumpled the memo into a ball and popped it into his mouth. Then, with an insouciant wave of the hand, he was gone, returning with a smile on his face to the alien land where death stalked always at his elbow.
“No report on Professor Vance’s whereabouts—. No trace has been found of Professor Gregory Vance.” All the rest of that day, all the next morning, the recurring phrase from the busy operators pounded at Dean Thorkel, thumped into his brain. The total absence of news from Greg meant that his plan was working, that he was safe. But—
Mid-morning, a low, insistent burr pulled his eyes to the serried row of phonejacks on his desktop. A red glow showed above the furthest one on his private line. Only two men knew that combination. Greg! It must be Greg! Thorkel slammed on his headphones, jammed the dangling plug into its receptacle.
“Hello.”
“Dean?” A flat voice, monotonous, unfamiliar. “Greg speaking. Greg Vance.” It didn’t sound like Greg. Thorkel jerked down two cupped discs from the headband across his skull, fitted them over his eyes.
“What’s up?” It was Greg Vance. The visor eyepieces brought his image clearly, his high-domed head, the patch of premature gray at its temples. But—it must have been the effect of the Borealis—a greenish tinge filmed the televised face and the eyes seemed glazed, expressionless.
“Dean!” the unnatural voice whispered. “Come to me. I need—” A sudden shadow loomed behind Greg’s head. It was gone. There was a thud in Thorkel’s ears, the soft thud of a fallen body. Then—nothing.
Someone had found Greg! Some enemy. Thorkel ripped the headpiece away, crouched below the screen of his desk. He pulled out the lowermost drawer. His hand slid within it, pressed against the upper-edge of one side-piece, forced the apparently solid metal down and to the rear. The steel slid. Thorkel’s fingers fumbled within the revealed cavity.
The concealed niche was empty. The paper that meant Vance’s safety, the nation’s safety, was gone.
Thorkel lunged to his feet, leaped the stairs to the floor below, ran in great, bounding strides to the exit. His ’copter was parked, sleekly yellow, in the open roof-square. In a few seconds he was in its driving seat.
Above, the traffic beam showed red, and a green police plane hovered watchfully. But Dean Thorkel thrust over the throttle, and the gyro shot up from its berth, zoomed through the thick cross-streams overhead.
Thorkel had a momentary glimpse of a white-faced pilot at the controls of a lumbering bus-flier as he shot across its prow. His stubby wings scraped a rusting flivver’s wings. A woman’s shrill scream came thinly up to him. The traffic cop’s siren was in his ears and the green plane was diving for him.
A twisted grin relieved the grimness of Thorkel’s face for an instant. His horizontal-flight propeller screamed as it bit the air. The yellow gyro darted north. The police boat banked and was after him. Dead ahead another green plane appeared, steadied, wa
ited ominously.
On the dashboard before the newsman a foot-square Metal box was fastened, crudely. Fine wires led from the box, and made a meshwork on all the outer surfaces of Thorkel’s gyro.
“You may have to reach me unobserved,” Greg Vance had said, when he had worked to install the queer contrivance. “This will enable you to do so, as it will enable me to slip away unseen.”
The first police craft was overhauling Thorkel, was fifty yards behind. Its siren shrilled again, and a black, metallic tube snouted at him. Thorkel jabbed at a button on the front of the box.
Two traffic officers rubbed amazed eyes, and looked again for the yellow gyro that had flicked into non-existence between them. But there was nothing to be seen!
Everything outside his own little ship was nothingness to Thorkel’s eyes. He was in a tiny world of his own, suspended in illimitable, empty space. Only sound beat in to him from the invisible world about him, the sough of the crowded air-lanes two thousand feet below, the muted roar of the great city still lower, the rattling thunder of the pursuer’s prop, the police siren moaning into sudden silence.
On the fifteen thousand foot level, where chances of collision were at a minimum, Dean Thorkel drove on northward. Blind flying with a vengeance, this was, though broad daylight and an unclouded sky were all about him. For that same daylight was flowing around his gyro, the ether waves curved by the field of force the little box produced and the fine wires guided. No sight could come to Thorkel of things beyond that network, nor could anyone beyond that network see his plane. The light waves were warped.
“Good thing,” Thorkel muttered, “that I’ve got a sound-wave robot pilot instead of the old style radio-reflector, or I’d sure be out of luck.”
Cold crept into the yellow gyro-copter’s cabin, cold that even the high altitude heat-coils could not combat. The position dot on the robot-pilot’s map was close to the point where it became necessary for Thorkel to take over the manual control for the landing. He pressed a black button.
The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack Page 36