American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Bunny, Sheffield’s assistant, jaunted into the private office. “Chief!” he shouted in excitement. “Something brand new’s turned up. A lech-jaunte! Two society kids bribed a C-class tart to— Ooop. Sorry. Didn’t realize you had—” Bunny broke off and stared. “Fourmyle!” he exclaimed.

  “What? Who?” Sheffield demanded.

  “Don’t you know him, Chief?” Bunny stammered. “That’s Fourmyle of Ceres. Gully Foyle.”

  More than a year ago, Regis Sheffield had been hypnotically fulminated and triggered for this moment. His body had been prepared to respond without thought, and the response was lightning. Sheffield struck Foyle in half a second; temple, throat and groin. It had been decided not to depend on weapons since none might be available.

  Foyle fell. Sheffield turned on Bunny and battered him back across the office. Then he spat into his palm. It had been decided not to depend on drugs since drugs might not be available. Sheffield’s salivary glands had been prepared to respond with an anaphylaxis secretion to the stimulus. He ripped open Foyle’s sleeve, dug a nail deep into the hollow of Foyle’s elbow and slashed. He pressed his spittle into the ragged cut and pinched the skin together.

  A strange cry was torn from Foyle’s lips; the tattooing showed livid on his face. Before the stunned law assistant could make a move, Sheffield swung Foyle up to his shoulder and jaunted.

  He arrived in the middle of the Four Mile Circus in Old St. Pat’s. It was a daring but calculated move. This was the last place he would be expected to go, and the first place where he might expect to locate the PyrE. He was prepared to deal with anyone he might meet in the cathedral, but the interior of the circus was empty.

  The vacant tents ballooning up in the nave looked tattered; they had already been looted. Sheffield plunged into the first he saw. It was Fourmyle’s traveling library, filled with hundreds of books and thousands of glittering novel-beads. The Jack-jaunters were not interested in literature. Sheffield threw Foyle down on the floor. Only then did he take a gun from his pocket.

  Foyle’s eyelids fluttered; his eyes opened.

  “You’re drugged,” Sheffield said rapidly. “Don’t try to jaunte. And don’t move. I’m warning you, I’m prepared for anything.”

  Dazedly, Foyle tried to rise. Sheffield instantly fired and seared his shoulder. Foyle was slammed back against the stone flooring. He was numbed and bewildered. There was a roaring in his ears and a poison coursing through his blood.

  “I’m warning you,” Sheffield repeated. “I’m prepared for anything.”

  “What do you want?” Foyle whispered.

  “Two things. Twenty pounds of PyrE, and you. You most of all.”

  “You lunatic! You damned maniac! I came into your office to give it up . . . hand it over . . .”

  “To the O.S.?”

  “To the . . . what?”

  “The Outer Satellites? Shall I spell it for you?”

  “No . . .” Foyle muttered. “I might have known. The patriot, Sheffield, an O.S. agent. I should have known. I’m a fool.”

  “You’re the most valuable fool in the world, Foyle. We want you even more than the PyrE. That’s an unknown to us, but we know what you are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My God! You don’t know, do you? You still don’t know. You haven’t an inkling.”

  “Of what?”

  “Listen to me,” Sheffield said in a pounding voice. “I’m taking you back two years to ‘Nomad.’ Understand? Back to the death of the ‘Nomad.’ One of our raiders finished her off and they found you aboard the wreck. The last man alive.”

  “So an O.S. ship did blast ‘Nomad’?”

  “Yes. You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t remember anything about that. I never could.”

  “I’m telling you why. The raider got a clever idea. They’d turn you into a decoy . . . a sitting duck, understand? You were half dead, but they took you aboard and patched you up. They put you into a spacesuit and cast you adrift with your microwave on. You were broadcasting distress signals and mumbling for help on every wave band. The idea was, they’d lurk nearby and pick off the IP ships that came to rescue you.”

  Foyle began to laugh. “I’m getting up,” he said recklessly. “Shoot again, you son of a bitch, but I’m getting up.” He struggled to his feet, clutching his shoulder. “So ‘Vorga’ shouldn’t have picked me up anyway,” Foyle laughed. “I was a decoy. Nobody should have come near me. I was a shill, a lure, death bait . . . Isn’t that the final irony? ‘Nomad’ didn’t have any right to be rescued in the first place. I didn’t have any right to revenge.”

  “You still don’t understand,” Sheffield pounded. “They were nowhere near ‘Nomad’ when they set you adrift. They were six hundred thousand miles from ‘Nomad.’ ”

  “Six hundred thous—?”

  “ ‘Nomad’ was too far out of the shipping lanes. They wanted you to drift where ships would pass. They took you six hundred thousand miles sunward and set you adrift. They put you through the air lock and backed off, watching you drift. Your suit lights were blinking and you were moaning for help on the micro-wave. Then you disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “You were gone. No more lights, no more broadcast. They came back to check. You were gone without a trace. And the next thing we learned . . . you got back aboard ‘Nomad.’ ”

  “Impossible.”

  “Man, you space-jaunted!” Sheffield said savagely. “You were patched and delirious, but you space-jaunted. You spacejaunted six hundred thousand miles through the void back to the wreck of the ‘Nomad.’ You did something that’s never been done before. God knows how. You don’t even know yourself, but we’re going to find out. I’m taking you out to the Satellites with me and we’ll get that secret out of you if we have to tear it out.”

  He took Foyle’s throat in his powerful hand and hefted the gun in the other. “But first I want the PyrE. You’ll produce it, Foyle. Don’t think you won’t.” He lashed Foyle across the forehead with the gun. “I’ll do anything to get it. Don’t think I won’t.” He smashed Foyle again, coldly, efficiently. “If you’re looking for a purge, man, you’ve found it!”

  Bunny leaped off the public jaunte stage at Five-Points and streaked into the main entrance of Central Intelligence’s New York Office like a frightened rabbit. He shot past the outermost guard cordon, through the protective labyrinth, and into the inner offices. He acquired a train of excited pursuers and found himself face to face with the more seasoned guards who had calmly jaunted to positions ahead of him and were waiting.

  Bunny began to shout: “Yeovil! Yeovil! Yeovil!”

  Still running, he dodged around desks, kicked over chairs, and created an incredible uproar. He continued his yelling: “Yeovil! Yeovil! Yeovil!” Just before they were about to put him out of his misery, Y’ang-Yeovil appeared.

  “What’s all this?” he snapped. “I gave orders that Miss Wednesbury was to have absolute quiet.”

  “Yeovil!” Bunny shouted.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Sheffield’s assistant.”

  “What . . . Bunny?”

  “Foyle!” Bunny howled. “Gully Foyle.”

  Y’ang-Yeovil covered the fifty feet between them in exactly one-point-six-six seconds. “What about Foyle?”

  “Sheffield’s got him,” Bunny gasped.

  “Sheffield? When?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  “Why didn’t he bring him here?”

  “He abducted him. I think Sheffield’s an O.S. agent . . .”

  “Why didn’t you come at once?”

  “Sheffield jaunted with Foyle. . . . Knocked him stiff and disappeared. I went looking. All over. Took a chance. Must have made fifty jauntes in twenty minutes. . . .”

  “Amateur!” Y’ang-Yeovil exclaimed in exasperation. “Why didn’t you leave that to the pros?”

  “Found ’em.”

  “You found them?
Where?”

  “Old St. Pat’s. Sheffield’s after the—”

  But Y’ang-Yeovil had turned on his heel and was tearing back up the corridor, shouting: “Robin! Robin! Stop! Stop!”

  And then their ears were bruised by the bellow of thunder.

  Fifteen

  Like widening rings in a pond, the Will and the Idea spread, searching out, touching and tripping the delicate subatomic trigger of PyrE. The thought found particles, dust, smoke, vapor, motes, molecules. The Will and the Idea transformed them all.

  In Sicily, where Dott. Franco Torre had worked for an exhausting month attempting to unlock the secret of one slug of PyrE, the residues and the precipitates had been dumped down a drain which led to the sea. For many months the Mediterranean currents had drifted these residues across the sea bottom. In an instant a hump-backed mound of water towering fifty feet high traced the courses, northeast to Sardinia and southwest to Tripoli. In a micro-second the surface of the Mediterranean was raised into the twisted casting of a giant earthworm that wound around the islands of Pantelleria, Lampedusa, Linosa, and Malta.

  Some of the residues had been burned off; had gone up the chimney with smoke and vapor to drift for hundreds of miles before settling. These minute particles showed where they had finally settled in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Greece with blinding pin-point explosions of incredible minuteness and intensity. And some motes, still drifting in the stratosphere, revealed their presence with brilliant gleams like daylight stars.

  In Texas, where Prof. John Mantley had had the same baffling experience with PyrE, most of the residues had gone down the shaft of an exhausted oil well which was also used to accommodate radioactive wastes. A deep water table had absorbed much of the matter and spread it slowly over an area of some ten square miles. Ten square miles of Texas flats shook themselves into corduroy. A vast untapped deposit of natural gas at last found a vent and came shrieking up to the surface where sparks from flying stones ignited it into a roaring torch, two hundred feet high.

  A milligram of PyrE deposited on a disk of filter paper long since discarded, forgotten, rounded up in a waste paper drive and at last pulped into a mold for type metal, destroyed the entire late night edition of the Glasgow Observer. A fragment of PyrE spattered on a lab smock long since converted into rag paper, destroyed a Thank You note written by Lady Shrapnel, and destroyed an additional ton of first class mail in the process.

  A shirt cuff, inadvertently dipped into an acid solution of PyrE, long abandoned along with the shirt, and now worn under his mink suit by a Jack-jaunter, blasted off the wrist and hand of the Jack-jaunter in one fiery amputation. A decimilligram of PyrE, still adhering to a former evaporation crystal now in use as an ash tray, kindled a fire that scorched the office of one Baker, dealer in freaks and purveyor of monsters.

  Across the length and breadth of the planet were isolated explosions, chains of explosions, traceries of fire, pin points of fire, meteor flares in the sky, great craters and narrow channels plowed in the earth, exploded in the earth, vomited forth from the earth.

  In Old St. Pat’s nearly a tenth of a gram of PyrE was exposed in Fourmyle’s laboratory. The rest was sealed in its Inert Lead Isotope safe, protected from accidental and intentional psychokinetic ignition. The blinding blast of energy generated from that tenth of a gram blew out the walls and split the floors as though an internal earthquake had convulsed the building. The buttresses held the pillars for a split second and then crumbled. Down came towers, spires, pillars, buttresses, and roof in a thundering avalanche to hesitate above the yawning crater of the floor in a tangled, precarious equilibrium. A breath of wind, a distant vibration, and the collapse would continue until the crater was filled solid with pulverized rubble.

  The star-like heat of the explosion ignited a hundred fires and melted the ancient thick copper of the collapsed roof. If a milligram more of PyrE had been exposed to detonation, the heat would have been intense enough to vaporize the metal immediately. Instead, it glowed white and began to flow. It streamed off the wreckage of the crumbled roof and began searching its way downward through the jumbled stone, iron, wood, and glass, like some monstrous molten mold creeping through a tangled web.

  Dagenham and Y’ang-Yeovil arrived almost simultaneously. A moment later Robin Wednesbury appeared and then Jisbella McQueen. A dozen Intelligence operatives and six Dagenham couriers arrived along with Presteign’s Jaunte-Watch and the police. They formed a cordon around the blazing block, but there were very few spectators. After the shock of the New Year’s Eve raid, that single explosion had frightened half New York into another wild jaunte for safety.

  The uproar of the fire was frightful, and the massive grind of tons of wreckage in uneasy balance was ominous. Everyone was forced to shout and yet was fearful of the vibrations. Y’angYeovil bawled the news about Foyle and Sheffield into Dagenham’s ear. Dagenham nodded and displayed his deadly smile.

  “We’ll have to go in,” he shouted.

  “Fire suits,” Y’ang-Yeovil shouted.

  He disappeared and reappeared with a pair of white Disaster

  Crew fire suits. At the sight of these, Robin and Jisbella began shouting hysterical objections. The two men ignored them, wriggled into the Inert Isomer armor and inched into the inferno.

  Within Old St. Pat’s it was as though a monstrous hand had churned a log jam of wood, stone, and metal. Through every interstice crawled tongues of molten copper, slowly working downward, igniting wood, crumbling stone, shattering glass. Where the copper flowed it merely glowed, but where it poured it spattered dazzling droplets of white hot metal.

  Beneath the log jam yawned a black crater where formerly the floor of the cathedral had been. The explosion had split the flagstone asunder, revealing the cellars, subcellars, and vaults deep below the building. These too were filled with a snarl of stones, beams, pipes, wire, the remnants of the Four Mile circus tents; all fitfully lit small fires. Then the first of the copper dripped down into the crater and illuminated it with a brilliant molten splash.

  Dagenham pounded Y’ang-Yeovil’s shoulder to attract his attention and pointed. Halfway down the crater, in the midst of the tangle, lay the body of Regis Sheffield, drawn and quartered by the explosion. Y’ang-Yeovil pounded Dagenham’s shoulder and pointed. Almost at the bottom of the crater lay Gully Foyle, and as the blazing spatter of molten copper illuminated him, they saw him move. The two men at once turned and crawled out of the cathedral for a conference.

  “He’s alive.”

  “How’s it possible?”

  “I can guess. Did you see the shreds of tent wadded near him?

  It must have been a freak explosion up at the other end of the cathedral and the tents in between cushioned Foyle. Then he dropped through the floor before anything else could hit him.”

  “I’ll buy that. We’ve got to get him out. He’s the only man who knows where the PyrE is.”

  “Could it still be here . . . unexploded?”

  “If it’s in the ILI safe, yes. That stuff is inert to anything. Never mind that now. How are we going to get him out?”

  “Well we can’t work down from above.”

  “Why not?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? One false step and the whole mess will collapse.”

  “Did you see that copper flowing down?”

  “God, yes!”

  “Well if we don’t get him out in ten minutes, he’ll be at the bottom of a pool of molten copper.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I’ve got a long shot.”

  “What?”

  “The cellars of the old RCA buildings across the street are as deep as St. Pat’s.”

  “And?”

  “We’ll go down and try to hole through. Maybe we can pull Foyle out from the bottom.”

  A squad broke into the ancient RCA buildings, abandoned and sealed up for two generations. They went down into the cellar arcades, crumbling museums of the retail stores of centuries past. They
located the ancient elevator shafts and dropped through them into the subcellars filled with electric installations, heat plants and refrigeration systems. They went down into the sump cellars, waist deep in water from the streams of prehistoric Manhattan Island, streams that still flowed beneath the streets that covered them.

  As they waded through the sump cellars, bearing eastnortheast to bring up opposite the St. Pat’s vaults, they suddenly discovered that the pitch dark was illuminated by a fiery flickering up ahead. Dagenham shouted and flung himself forward. The explosion that had opened the subcellars of St. Pat’s had split the septum between its vaults and those of the RCA buildings. Through a jagged rent in stone and earth they could peer into the bottom of the inferno.

  Fifty feet inside was Foyle, trapped in a labyrinth of twisted beams, stones, pipe, metal, and wire. He was illuminated by a roaring glow from above him and fitful flames around him. His clothes were on fire and the tattooing was livid on his face. He moved feebly, like a bewildered animal in a maze. “My God!” Y’ang-Yeovil exclaimed. “The Burning Man!” “What?”

  “The Burning Man I saw on the Spanish Stairs. Never mind that now. What can we do?”

  “Go in, of course.”

  A brilliant white gob of copper suddenly oozed down close to Foyle and splashed ten feet below him. It was followed by a second, a third, a slow steady stream. A pool began to form. Dagenham and Y’ang-Yeovil sealed the face plates of their armor and crawled through the break in the septum. After three minutes of agonized struggling they realized that they could not get through the labyrinth to Foyle. It was locked to the outside but not from the inside. Dagenham and Y’ang-Yeovil backed up to confer.

  “We can’t get to him,” Dagenham shouted, “but he can get out.”

  “How? He can’t jaunte, obviously, or he wouldn’t be there.”

  “No, he can climb. Look. He goes left, then up, reverses, makes a turn along that beam, slides under it and pushes through that tangle of wire. The wire can’t be pushed in, which is why we can’t get to him, but it can push out, which is how he can get out. It’s a one-way door.”