themselves to an area sufficiently small for us to comb thoroughly, but the discovery of them so far from London shocked us. There could be two possible reasons for their being found so far out: either they could move much more quickly and secretly than we had thought, or else — and here was an appalling prospect — or else, as I say, there had been more nuclei of them than we had been aware of.
Thus arose the possibility of the Vulcanids being able to operate from one or more unknown centres.
However, after mopping up the Kew Gardens colony and the few at Leighton Buzzard, we looked in vain for more of them. We could hardly expect to have annihilated the monsters, for we had already had evidence of their cunning and adaptability. The Kew colony had been half as big again as the first-comers, in the matter of physical size. And the Leighton Buzzard Vulcanids had varied yet again by being much smaller — no more than thirty inches tall. We had Axel's word for it that they all came of the same stock, and the inference was that they had adopted what they believed to be protective guise.
After the destruction of three by electrocution at Primswood, the Vulcanids had taken to the water at Stamford Hill, and, being translucent, were almost invisible therein.
But our electrical barrier — which they must have discovered without our knowing it — had driven them to seek another way out of the reservoir. They had found it. And, what is more, they had undoubtedly multiplied, producing what I can only describe as bigger or better Vulcanids.
The Kew creatures had been bigger and faster, and had somehow acquired the property of being able to withstand fire. When they were destroyed, another brood had been produced, small enough, it may have been thought, to avoid detection so easily.
This reasoning, by Dr. Axel, led us to the conclusion that the .Vulcanids were able to procure mutation of species to protect themselves. And their rapid growth to full size "could mean that other changes, which in Terrestrial creatures might take many generations for full achievement, could be condensed into a single generation.
Taking the argument a step further, it could also mean that second, or third, generation Vulcanids might even present an outer casing that could withstand our fire-guns. That being so — and we assumed it as a factor to be considered — we would have to destroy every Vulcanid before they became invulnerable to whatever weapon we produced.
We were unlucky in our experiments at destroying them in the water at Stamford Hill, although we poured gallons of Para-Pyrotheine — the charge in the fire-guns — into the water. The considerable dilution of the fluid rendered it harmless, and we called off that operation when Axel pointed out that the Vulcanids might even become immune to the liquid by living in close contact with a solution of it.
It seemed as though the nauseating monsters had the upper hand when we found that they would not come out into the open, and after three weeks of searching for them, we began to fear aggressive action from them, instead of defensive passivity.
And I think that all of us, at some time or another, began to feel pity for them. After all, was my own reasoning, they were struggling for a foothold on our world, and in their way they were as tenacious to life as were we ourselves. But whenever the subject was discussed, the Virians stoutly maintained that the Vulcanids were the scourge of the Solar System. In their own long history, the Virians had experienced the potency of the Vulcanid's mastery, and they insisted that the creature would never take second place to any form of life.
The next phase of the Vulcanid attack took us unawares. The first indication came when a Virian became "entranced" one morning. He displayed the usual symptoms of Vulcanid control in a mild degree, and the message he conveyed to us was sufficiently short and commanding for me to reproduce it here.
He was "directed" by the controlling intelligence to ensure that the message was recorded in more or less permanent form, and it was accordingly written out at his dictation. It took the form of an ultimatum:
"This is the last time you will hear the voice of Hafna. We do not come to make terms with you. As Masters of the Solar System, we demand of you complete submission. You have experienced our guidance and control in the world of Hafna, and you know that you have nothing to fear under it. You know that you will be enabled to live your lives under complete protection and in complete peace.
Place yourselves once more under our control. We offer no middle course. If a single one of you refuses this opportunity, we shall strike you down within a day — every one of you."
The command was delivered to an audience of four: Arabin, Axel, Krill Hvensor and myself. We had thought it best to keep the nature of the entranced Virian's communication secret from the others until we had considered it.
Now we sat round a table in Axel's surgery.
"Read it again," said Leo.
I read it through again, and then deposited the sheet of paper on the table before him. He stared at it as though he did not comprehend its meaning, and twiddled irritatingly with a gold pencil. We left the first comment to him.
After a minute or so, he looked up.
"Seems to me," he said, "that although these bloody jellyfish say they don't come to make terms, they are trying to do that very thing. Otherwise — why this order? And I must say, in all my born days 1
don't think 1 ever came across a hammier piece of nonsense. 'Masters of the Solar System,' indeed!"
Axel coughed nervously. Leo looked over to him.
"Well, Paracelus? What do you make of it? Think they can strike us down within a day — every one of us? Go on! We're the patients. Tell us the worst."
Axel smiled apologetically.
"Is oil right making joke," he said, "but is here something more serious."
"Course it's serious," Leo replied. "But what I want you to tell me is whether they can possibly do us all in, like this big ham says."
"Leo," said Axel, leaning across the table, "they can do strange things, without doubt. How much they can do is more than I can tell. The brain structure of the Vulcanids is something beyond my
comprehension. We know that they can control other minds. We know that they are able to make different each new generation of their kind. We do not know how they will make different their next generation — and maybe that unknown generation is already born and waiting to start work upon us now."
"Well, Krill Hvensor?" asked Leo, turning to the Virians' leader. "What about you? You want to go back to the Vulcanids?"
"I speak for all my people," replied the Virian. "We will never submit to them again. If we die now, it is only in this world. There is another world waiting for us Virians, as no doubt there is waiting for you and your kind. What does it mean? Stepping out of one room into another, that is all."
Leo turned to me. "Denis?"
There was nothing I could say. If the Vulcanids intended to keep to their threat, just one dissenter would result in our destruction. There were at least two such before me now. So I nodded. "I'm with you," I said. It was not as statesmanlike a decision as I would like to have uttered, but then, we always think of a better answer when it's too late.
Meanwhile, Krill Hvensor shook the entranced Virian impatiently and muttered to him in the language the Virians used among themselves. Then he shook again, more smartly.
The Virian rolled from his chair and collapsed on the floor.
We were silent for a second or two, and then Axel leaped across the room to the Virian. He felt his pulse and turned back his eyelid.
"Yes," he whispered. "Is dead."
Leo ran from the room to the hall of the house, where the call-up microphone hung. I heard him through the open door calling all out-stations into the circuit.
"Check all bodies at once," he called. "There's been a death here. See that nobody — Virian or Terrestrial — accepts control from the Vulcanids. Anyone seeming to show any lassitude anywhere: shake him up. Don't let the Vulcanids get into anyone's mind — repeat: don't let Vulcanids get into anyone's mind. I'll stand by here while check coun
ts come over."
One by one we heard the counts come in.
All correct at the store hangars.
All correct at Parkside.
All correct at the reservoir — where we still maintained a guard.
Then came the call from the farm.
There was a sob in the voice of the man at the microphone as he told us his news.
"Two Virians already dead here," he whispered. "They ran amok and — I think... they've killed... Mr.
Ludlam."
Axel and I were out of the house and into a fast car before he finished the rest of his message. Leo called from the steps: "Keep tuned in here; I'll hang on until I hear from you — or from... anyone else."
As we drove madly along the dust-coated roads towards the river, Leo's voice came in over the speaker.
He was calling in all out-stations.
"Universal call — universal call," he commanded. "Everyone indoors, please. Everyone. Denis and Axel — calling Denis and Axel on way to farm. Denis and Axel — stay at farm until next orders. Denis and Axel — please repeat and signal message understood."
We repeated the message back to him, and then there was a pause before he spoke again. This time his voice came over the individual speaker, and we realised that he was now tuned to our solo wavelength.
Other listeners, on the universal wave, would not hear him.
"Denis and Axel — can you hear me on this wave?" he asked.
I signalled confirmation.
"Listen carefully. Switch off your universal mike. Done that? Now pull in to the side of the road. Near any tall buildings? Right, well get right up against them. Now pay attention.
"A call's just come through from the hangars. Alatto Skirr, scanning down there, has seen a black Disc at six o'clock, coasting low and hovering. Stay in this circuit till I call him for more news, and stay where you are. Back in a minute."
There was a pause while he spoke on the hangar wavelength, and we heard nothing from him, as he had switched out of our wavelength. Six o'clock referred not to the time of day, but to the position of the sighted Disc, which would be directly south, if one read the horizon as a clock dial.
Axel popped his head out of the roof trap to look round, but the road we were in ran east and west, and high buildings shut off our view to the south. In a few minutes, Leo's voice came back to us.
"No mistake, though I hoped it might have been," he said solemnly. "It's a sure enough black Disc, and is circling low somewhere over the South Downs. Get moving again fast, and perhaps you'll make the farm before the Disc comes within sight range. Keep in this circuit and I'll keep you posted. Back in a minute." And he switched out again.
We pulled out into the middle of the road again — with only our own few vehicles using the roads we had forgotten the rule of the road long ago — and pressed on at top speed. We were entering Lewisham as Leo came back into our circuit.
"It's gone now," he said, with some relief. "Shot off due south and Alatto Skirr lost it over the horizon. I can't believe that this is part of the Vulcanids' attack, and Krill Hvensor here seems to think it might not even be piloted by Nagani. In which case, it seems that some other bloody menace has popped out of the universe at us. Anyway, get down to the farm quickly. I had a message from them down there to say that poor old Ludlam's in a bad way. We must save him. Got all the kit you want down there, Axel?"
"Yes, I think so. But what happened to Ludlam? Must be knowing what to treat him for, to save time, please."
"They knifed him, the devils," replied Leo. "Seems to be a clean wound, the man says on the radio, but he's lost a lot of blood."
Axel sighed with relief. Anything physical he could cope with, he felt, but he dreaded any metaphysical complications. At the farm he had equipped for himself a surgery and operating theatre the like of which he used to dream about in his most ambitious moments when he dwelt in Stockholm. He called Leo back.
"Let us switch over to the farm, Leo," he pleaded. "Can be starting treatment right now. Is down there Otto Langer, who is able to help while I am talking to him."
"O.K. Switch back to universal. If there's any news about our new visitor, I'll call you back and give you the dope. Over to universal." As we turned the switch, Leo's voice came through the universal speaker again.
Axel had Langer to the microphone in a few seconds and gave him hurried instructions. Thomas had already been carried into Axel's improvised operating theatre, I gathered from the hurried conversation in German between Axel and Langer. There was a series of urgent "Jawohl's" from Langer, and Axel put down his microphone with a big sigh.
"When is settled down peaceful again here, another doctor we must start to train," he breathed. "Is too much for one, and too, what should happen if the Vulcanids get me?"
I knew what was on his mind. Rachelle Karim's confinement was due, and now Ludlam's danger looked like coinciding with the Karim's rejoicing.
We reached the farm in five more minutes, and I hurriedly parked the car while Axel rushed into the theatre he had installed in the dairy — where, incidentally, the two Vulcanid carcasses had been his first subjects.
I tried to look unconcerned as I peered round the buildings at the southern horizon. There was no sign of the recently sighted Disc.
An hour later, Axel came out to give us his news. He was still wearing his theatre gown, but had discarded his gloves and mask. His face was serious. In his hand was a kitchen knife, with an eight-inch pointed blade.
He told us how he and Langer had extracted the knife from poor Thomas's back. Luckily, Langer had been on the spot when the Virians made their attack, and had prevented eager helpers from withdrawing the knife, otherwise Thomas would have died from loss of blood. As it was, the damage was deadly serious. The ribs had jammed the knife, which had been thrust in edgeways, but even so the lung was damaged, and Axel was doubtful whether Ludlam, at his great age, would survive.
He made his report to Arabin over the microphone, and then flopped into a chair. "Is too hard, operation like this, for two men," he swore. "Should be theatre sisters for helping, should be also a doctor for the anaesthetic, should be boiling water, should be this, that. With these things, Thomas would live for sure. Now — I do not know."
As he sighed in despair, the speaker crackled and a voice came through to him. It was Karim.
"Doctor Axel! Doctor Axel! Come quickly. Rachelle says the baby is nearly here! Quickly, please!
Senora Lopez, she thinks there are two babies! Quickly, el hamdolillah!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Those of us who knew of the Vulcanids' ultimatum passed a sleepless night, as may be imagined. We knew enough about the Vulcanids to realise that there must be much more we could never know about them. The full uncanny range of the creatures' powers would quite probably be incomprehensible to human minds, even if disclosed to them.
So we waited for the unknown throughout that night. The monsters had struck from a distance twice, and we awaited their next attack. I cannot say we waited with composure, for despite our apparent unconcern when we heard the creatures' terms, we were all terrified inwardly. I see nothing to be ashamed of in fearing the unknown, especially when the unknown adopts such a horrifying form as that of the Intelligences of Hafna.
But morning came with no report of any further catastrophe. During the night we had added another soul to the slender register of humanity, for Rachelle had given birth to a fine boy. Karim, unaware of the knowledge we held, planned a party on the Oriental scale. We felt that we could not pass on to him the warning we had received, although he was usually in our inner counsels. It was a considerable effort for us to appear to fall in with his plans for a party, but we did our best.
As the dawn came, Leo and Krill Hvensor and myself left the house, intending to walk in the park. The Bayswater Road was a long alley of sunlight, and the complete stillness and silence everywhere were soothing to us. On such occasions we often felt that we would have given much to hav
e been able to preserve some wild bird life. When one is alone in utter silence, the absence of the sounds that Nature used to produce is unnerving.
As we entered the park, the dense trees cast heavy shadows in the almost horizontal rays of the sun. It was some minutes before we noticed that one great black shadow did not move as the sun rose. We looked idly at it as we walked.
And then we recognised it.
In the middle of the lawn there stood a great, squat black Vulcanid Disc.
We looked at each other in horror. Was this how the Vulcanids intended to strike? Had they brought the rest of their evil brood to edge us off the planet?
World in Eclipse Page 17