Madame Atomos Strikes Back

by André Caroff

In this particular case she felt that the bus had not headed for Mount Hamilton. “Guide me to the beach,” she said before thinking about it.

  Veronica opened her eyes wide. You really think that the bus is there?”

  “Nowhere else,” May answered.

  “How can you be sure!” the teacher protested, trying to stay objective. “After the beach there’s the sea. And besides, the bus is too heavy to drive on the sand. Why would it choose to go there instead of somewhere else?”

  May shot her an icy glare. “In your opinion, why did this little yellow man, whom you’d never seen before, kidnap the children?”

  Veronica buried her face in her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to get rid of me because I was bothering him…”

  “No,” May said sharply. “Everything was worked out in advance. The bus came to the school at the appointed time. Then the driver found an excuse to get you off and he left you on the side of the road. Only, it wasn’t because you were bothering him, but rather so you wouldn’t find out where he was hiding the children!”

  While the teacher sat there speechless with surprise, May started the motor and said, “Show me the way to the beach.” Veronica guided her across the town without thinking. She didn’t understand what was happening. She thought that the little driver had suddenly become crazy and that May Maxwell had some kind of imagination.

  The De Soto abruptly came out onto a median strip overlooking the sea. The deserted beach stretched out of sight in both directions. A few boats were rocking gently in the small marina. A white yacht was anchored a quarter mile off shore and two warships were cruising by. The place had been abandoned and the bus carrying the children was nowhere in sight.

  “You see!” Veronica Mac Connell gloated.

  May got out and pointed to double tracks that turned off the median strip and disappeared down the beach. “These are the tracks of a heavy vehicle. Let’s follow it.”

  The two women got out, crossed the median strip down onto the beach and stopped when the water touched their feet. The tracks stopped there. Apparently the bus had gone straight into open water.

  Chapter IX

  It did not take Dr. Soblen long to realize that he would not meet up with Smith Beffort’s group again before 6 p.m. The polyester plates fought against the wind; the road went uphill; the bicycle snapped in the chaos; and his glasses fogged up to the point of becoming opaque. Sweaty and huffing, Soblen got off the bike. He had not yet reached the clearing, but his energy had melted like sugar in a glass of water. His skinny calves were as hard as the connecting rods of a train and trembled like ears of corn in the wind. Soblen was used to using his brain more than his muscles. For the first time he was sorry for that.

  Squatting down he tried to figure out a fast way to warn his partners. For a minute he despaired and then scolded himself for not calling the Boss. Even from New York the latter could have an influence on events. Instead of this, however, Soblen was the only one with the secret of the material that shielded the radiation of Madame Atomos and he did not know how he could save Smith Beffort, Akamatsu and Dick Slatt. Moreover, even if he discovered a way, at that very minute, to magically transport himself to any place on the mountain, Soblen was not sure to meet his friends. It was an unsolvable problem, but the doctor was a researcher who did not give up easily. He forgot where he was and concentrated on the puzzle with as much objectivity as if he were hunched over a microscope in his laboratory in New York.

  Thinkers often blunder like this, willingly forgetting the practical and burying themselves in the abstract with a kind of morbid frenzy. Thus Soblen totally forgot that he was sitting on the side of the mountain road and he let so much time slip by that when he shook himself out of his thoughts it was too late to escape the danger zone.

  Anyone else would have run away at full speed, tried to get hold of a car or ended up using violence to reach his goals. Soblen, however, realized that he was going to have to verify the effectiveness of the polyester plates himself. He arranged some big stones and propped up an anti-radiation shelter right in the middle of the narrow road. It was so well set up that in the end it looked like a barricade. Soblen sat down and waited.

  Without knowing it, he had just condemned Madame Atomos.

  Fifteen minutes before the fatal hour nine tenths of the sector forbidden to Whites was out of danger. But the evacuation did not go as planned. They had to count hundreds of deaths, rapes, thefts and murders, but the authorities felt that the final outcome of the operation was satisfactory.

  In San Francisco, Richmond, Berkeley and all the towns abandoned by the Whites, colored people became masters of the land. They became people without faith or laws who banded together in armed gangs and systematically pillaged the stores and deserted houses, even when people like themselves were the owners. As for these honest shopkeepers or laborers, they had fled with the Whites, putting more faith in social progress than in Madame Atomos to accomplish racial equality.

  Furious at this betrayal the pillagers raided and burned their goods. A massive fire broke out, wiped out one neighborhood and attacked another. Then the rebels had to transform into firefighters if they did not want to be masters of nothing but a pile of rubbish and ashes.

  It was pathetic…

  Farther south, terribly isolated in an area emptied of all humans, May Maxwell and Veronica Mac Connell were stuck on the beach with the tire tracks from the bus driven by one of Madame Atomos’ henchmen.

  “Disappearing like that in the blink of an eye is highly unlikely,” the teacher said in a feeble voice.

  May Maxwell corrected her. “Unlikely maybe, but certainly not in the blink of an eye. It was almost 20 minutes from the time we lost the bus until we first found the tracks. The lapse of time was quite enough to take the children somewhere else.”

  “And the tire tracks?”

  “It proves that the little man did not have time to erase them. Without them we’d still be searching for the bus on the roads. Now we know that it was sunk in a few feet of water.”

  “If the children were on it!” Veronica panicked.

  May pursed her lips and said firmly, “They’re not.”

  “You always talk like you’re so sure of everything,” the young lady was starting to get angry. “I won’t rest until I have some proof!”

  “You’re the P. E. teacher,” May offered. “Get undressed and dive in! That should be an easy exercise for you, shouldn’t it?”

  “That’s true,” Veronica admitted defiantly.

  May looked away. She was using the young lady as a tethered goat, but there was no other way. “Okay then, get going. While you’re doing that, I’ll try to find a pair of binoculars.”

  The statement was so unexpected that the teacher had another reason to be disconcerted. “What do you need them for and where are you going to find them?”

  May waved it off. “I’ll break a window. I stopped counting my petty thefts. As far as needing them, let me keep that a surprise. I’ll take the car…”

  Veronica looked around apprehensively. “Will you be gone long?”

  “No,” May assured her. “Are you scared of staying alone?”

  The young woman straightened up, kicked off her shoes and unfastened her skirt. “The fate of the children is too important for me to think about myself.”

  May admired her privately. She supposed that she was not reassured, but was thankful not to have alluded to the recent past. In 15 minutes, the time granted for the evacuation to be finished, Madame Atomos would start up her emitters again. That was something that Veronica could not stop thinking about!

  May walked away and said without turning around, “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  May got back to the median strip and had to force herself not to give in to the desire she had to keep the yacht in sight. She climbed behind the wheel of the De Soto and by the time she had started the engine, Veronica was already in panties and bra. Seeing how well built she
was, May figured that she would be capable of dealing with the trouble they were sure to run into.

  For a second May fiddled with the rear-view mirror. The white yacht was clearly visible, but it was not moving at all because two anchors were keeping it from drifting, which made her wonder even more why the calm water was stirred up and foaming around the bow. May clenched her jaws, took off into the center of town and stopped on a sidewalk after making sure that the car could not be seen from the yacht. She let 30 seconds tick off and then cut the motor, grabbed her gun and stepped out. Right away a distant engine hum was audible and she wondered whether she was too late. She double-timed it down the road, reached the median and hid behind the low wall bordering it. Evan while moving as fast as she could, she kept an eye on the red dinghy that was coming in at an alarming speed. Obviously it had been hidden by the yacht where the children had probably been taken after sinking the bus and the turmoil in the sea that May had noticed was caused by its propellers. Intrigued, she had decided to stir things up without telling Veronica. Banking on the fact that the kidnappers would worry about the bus being found, May goaded the teacher into the water. Either the yacht had been abandoned and nothing would happen or else it belonged to Madame Atomos and her captain would use any means to protect their affairs.

  May’s departure, probably to get some help, had sped thing up. The dinghy carried two men and was heading straight for where Veronica had just dived in. It looked like the men in the dinghy were there to kill her. Staying behind the wall, May slipped down the ramp and onto the beach. She lied down on the sand in the shadow of the median and placed the barrel of her gun on her left forearm.

  Veronica found the bus on her first dive. It was under ten feet of water about 20 strokes from the shore and had rolled there thanks to a bed of pebbles on which its wheels could keep turning. The heavy vehicle would have gone a lot farther if a rocky barrier had not stopped it.

  It only took her one look that it was completely empty. Relieved, she kicked up to the surface and gulped in the air before she heard the sound of the motor and saw the sharp stem bearing down on her over the gushing foam that glistened in the sun. She was terrorized and her reflexes went into action astoundingly fast. She doubled-up, swung and kicked and disappeared under the water.

  May heard the cursing that one of the men let out and knew that Veronica had not been hit. She aimed at the pilot and opened fire before the dinghy could swing away from the shore. The shots rang out just when the body of the pilot lurched under the short bursts of gunfire. May fired again. The man stopped screaming and toppled overboard while the dinghy ran aground on the beach with the motor stalled.

  Veronica surfaced. She was out of breath, expecting to hear apologies from the owners of the boat. In fact, she did not understand anything because she was not used to living in a world where murder was common currency. As soon as she was up, she saw the two corpses floating on the bloodstained water and she almost fainted.

  “Veronica!” May Maxwell shouted. “Come quickly!”

  The young woman struggled against the dizziness that was paralyzing her. She used her panic to boost her swimming and made it back to shore in record time.

  “Over here!” May ordered from where she was hiding behind the boat. “Hurry up!”

  Dripping wet, Veronica hesitated. “My clothes…”

  “I brought them over. Now get under cover. You’re a perfect target for…”

  A detonation cut her off and a bullet whizzed by. The shot was fired from the yacht, which was fortunately too far to hit anything accurately on the first try, but there was no doubt that this was just a prelude.

  Veronica jumped behind the boat, fear in her eyes. Another shot rang out. This time taking better aim, the shooter hit the hull and Veronica cowered next to May. “Don’t be afraid,” May said. “The motor will protect us. Try to get dressed without exposing yourself. We have to get out of here.”

  She talked curtly, keeping an eye on the warships that seemed to be moving closer. She vaguely hoped that they would hear or see that something was playing out at Pescadero Point. Her first thought was that it was a crazy hope because of the distance, but it could be that the lookout was just then facing their direction.

  May bit her lip. Her idea was delirious. Out at sea the yacht was the size of a pinhead!

  “Did you kill those two men?” the teacher asked, buttoning up her blouse with a trembling hand. “I’m just starting to get it. The children are aboard the yacht, aren’t they?”

  “Almost certainly,” May answered in a distant voice.

  She had just suddenly remembered that all the kidnapped children were white. So, at 6 p.m. they would be exposed to the rays of Madame Atomos and fall… What was the point of keeping 50 hostages whose death would erase any exchange value?

  “It’s 5:56!” Veronica said anxiously. “What are we going to do?”

  Only four minutes!

  “Do you think that the two of us together can get this boat back in the water?” May asked.

  The small craft had dug a deep groove in the sand. The weight of the motor was right in the front and the task looked extremely hard. Veronica shook her head, discouraged, “In four minutes it’s impossible.”

  “Listen, Veronica. I think that the yacht is anchored in a zone beyond the reach of Madame Atomos’ rays. Otherwise the little driver would not have made taken so much trouble to drive the children here. So we have to find a way to get out to sea. Look, it’s barely a quarter mile.”

  The teacher pointed toward the marina. “Over there are plenty of boats. But if we leave our cover we’ll be easy targets for the shooters on the yacht.”

  “We have to choose,” May said sharply. “Personally I prefer to die fast by a bullet than to drag it out for a long time, beaten down and eaten away by those strange rays or ending up in a psychiatric hospital. Make up your mind, Veronica. We only have three and half minutes!”

  The teacher swallowed hard. Not long before she had been young, without a thought in her head about dying some day. Now and almost in the blink of an eye she felt very old and only had the power to chose her own death.

  “Well?” May insisted.

  “You’re right. It’d be better to die right away. I’ll follow you…”

  “No, don’t follow me. You certainly run faster than me. Make a break for it straight ahead without looking back. Are you ready?”

  “I think so.”

  “Charge!” May yelled.

  Veronica literally sprang from behind the boat, quickly reached the edge of the sea where the wet, hard sand was easier to run on and sped off toward the marina without turning around.

  All of a sudden the yacht opened fire and May recognized the harsh staccato of a machine gun. She forced herself to keep up, but Veronica was younger, fitter and fear gave her wings. May heard the bullets whistle by and kick up the sand. Instantly she knew that they had chosen her for the target and that she had little chance of escaping. Nevertheless she pushed on, thinking about her husband and two children killed by Madame Atomos, and she felt strangely happy at the idea that she was going to join them soon.

  Maybe that was why death brushed her a hundred times without hitting her and she found herself breathing under the shelter of the marina’s pier where Veronica was waiting for her.

  Chapter X

  Smith Beffort ran toward the Observatory with the brutal determination and despair of a man who was leaping into the void. He could not have known that the atoms controlled by Madame Atomos were concentrated on the corpse of Dick Slatt, occupying every cell of his lifeless body in order to make him move. Nor did he know that the sinister Japanese woman had not been able, in less than a week, to set up as thoroughly as she had done in the past. Madame Atomos had too much confidence in her power, intelligence and the superiority of her applied technology.

  For once the immediate surroundings of her lair were not riddled with cameras, microphones or guards armed with the dreadful disintegra
ting gun. There was only an electronic brain directing the atoms to guarantee the defense of Madame Atomos and her two acolytes. So the machine recorded the appearance of a foreign body in its force field, automatically mobilized its invisible soldiers, easily conquered it and grouped all its energy to bring back the prisoner.

  In the director’s office of the Observatory Madame Atomos followed the different stages of the evacuation by radio. Her two-way radio received the latest news bulletins and allowed her to set her conditions for the United States. Six minutes before the predetermined hour Madame Atomos knew that she had just won one of her most brilliant victories and that she would soon rule over California. The Americans of color would line up behind her flag and the white murderers who were responsible for the massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be utterly exterminated!

  A wild joy swelled the heart of Kanoto Yoshimuta. It had taken more than 20 years, but now she was Madame Atomos and the United States was crawling at her feet. Later she would attack every nation that had the atomic bomb and that inhuman weapon would disappear off the face of the earth.

  The interphone sitting on the desk started buzzing. Madame Atomos flipped the switch and the voice of Fujimoto squeaked out of the speaker. “Madame Okabe has just opened the dome.”

  “Good,” the Japanese woman said. “Turn on the emitter at 6 p.m. sharp. Has Captain Osuma reported the results of his operation?”

  “Not yet, Madame,” Fujimoto answered respectfully, “but his message shouldn’t reach us before 6…”

  “Inform me immediately. Where are you right now?”

  “In the central dome, Madame.”

  Madame Atomos clicked her tongue and scolded him, “Go back down to the lookout station. I don’t like to be protected by machines alone!”

  “Please excuse me, Madame. It took two to open the dome. I’m going back down right now.”

  It was because of this combination of circumstances that Smith Beffort managed to get into the Observatory. Akamatsu, who was expecting to see him struck down, was taken aback when the G-man slipped between the trees bordering the platform. Farther on, Dick Slatt continued his horrible automaton stroll. Very shortly he reached the building, pushed open the door and, because he was dead, entered the invincible refuge.