The Lost Master - The Collected Works

by Stanley G. Weinbaum

  IT was the year 2000. America was at war, fighting for her very life against the Asiatic Union. And yet the American people—even army officers—found time for recreation. Recreation was a necessity, to take one's mind off the titanic struggle.

  Lieutenant Richard Lister, clad in swimming trunks, sat on a beach rug, staring moodily out across the Pacific Ocean toward the Seal Rocks and beyond, his hands clasped across his tanned knees, his bronzed face tense.

  "Let's not talk about the war; let's talk about us!" he exclaimed to Sally Amber, who sat beside him.

  The girl turned her strange, dark eyes inquisitively upon him.

  "You shouldn't feel that way, Dick," she said seriously. "Particularly as you're in such an important branch of the service. I'm not kidding; I mean it. Where would the country be without your Bureau of Military Biology and Bacteriology? We'd all be wiped out by the Asiatic Union's germs!"

  "Sure. And if it weren't for their bacteriologists, they'd be wiped out by our germs. It's a deadlock, I tell you, like this whole war. Look at Alaska: For more than a year now the Khan has been holding that little corner from Rocky Point to Cape Espenberg, and we haven't been able to budge his line a single inch, nor has he been able to budge ours. Each army is protected by one of those impenetrable Beckerley electrical fields.

  "Alaska is the key to the whole situation, with the Khan there in person. If we could just get through his Beckerley field, and put an end to him, the whole Asiatic Union would crumble. It's only his personality that can hold together such naturally hostile groups as the Siberian Russians, the Japs, the Chinese, the Tartars, and so forth. Without him, they'd be at each other's throats in a few hours!"

  "Well, why doesn't somebody do something about it?" asked Sally, impishly.

  "Lord knows we've tried!" Lister exclaimed. "Ten or a dozen brave Americans have gotten through the enemy lines, and tried to assassinate him, only to be captured, and subjected to horrible torture and death."

  The girl shuddered, and pulled one corner of the beach rug up around her shoulders.

  "I don't suppose I'd rate as a 'brave American,' " she said.

  "I'd take a chance on your bravery," Lister declared.

  "Why doesn't America land troops in Asia?" Sally asked.

  Lister stared at her sharply.

  "You know as well as I do," he said. "Although America controls the seas ever since we annihilated the Khan's fleet off the Marianas six months ago, yet he has ten million men under arms in Asia. What good would it do us to land our five million against such odds? No, we've got to lick the mad Khan in Alaska—somehow."

  "He isn't mad!" snapped Sally, unexpectedly.

  "How do you know?"

  "I've—I've—well, I've seen him."

  "I didn't know you'd ever been in Asia."

  "There are lots of things about me that you don't know," she retorted. "My father is dead, and I am quite wealthy. I've traveled a lot. Three years ago I was in the eastern capital—Harbin; and, what's more, I've been in Moscow, the western capital, too."

  "So you've seen the mad Khan," mused Lister. "Did you ever see the woman they call Princess Stephanie? What's she like? She's supposed to be very beautiful."

  Sally shrugged. "Oh, she's all right, if you like that type," she replied airily. "She's dark and has Khazar blood in her, and she's about my age—and anyway, why are you questioning me? Go on with your little lecture."

  "About us?" he asked hopefully.

  "No." She reached out one slim hand, and gently patted his knee. "About the Beckerley electrical fields. What are they? How do they operate?"

  HE FROWNED thoughtfully, trying to phrase his answer in words that a girl would understand.

  "It's an application of Morelle's experiment with electrical eddy currents," he said. I'm a botanist, not an electrical engineer, but I know that the idea involves the refraction of lines of magnetic force.

  "It works like this: Over each army on the Alaskan front the scientists have created a dome of electrical tension— a magnetic field. Any shell or drop bomb passing through this magnetic field is instantly heated to white heat by the electrical eddy currents induced in it by the field, and is thus caused to explode in mid-air.

  "Every city is likewise protected by a Beckerley field. You know how each auto-copter, on leaving the city limits of San Francisco, has to stop and be pushed through an iron-shielded subway until it's beyond the Beckerley field? Well, that's because the gasoline in the tank would be heated to the flash point by the walls of its container."

  "How about solid shot?" asked Sally.

  "That can pass through a field, of course, but what chance has solid shot of doing much damage? Our own copters could down any possible fleet of enemy planes long before they could drop enough solid missiles to do appreciable harm to a city; and as for the Alaskan front, the most that either side could do would be to chip a few rocks in the Yukon Hills.

  "No, the situation's a deadlock; the Khan is swept from the sea, but his enormous army prevents our invading Asia, and neither side can advance an inch in Alaska because of the Beckerley fields. It can't even become a war of attrition, because both the Asiatic Union and the United States are entirely self-supporting, and can never be starved into submission."

  "Do you think so?" asked Sally Amber in an odd voice. Suddenly she shrugged her smooth, brown shoulders as if to change the subject. "Will Admiral Allen be here Saturday?" she asked casually.

  "Why, no, I don't think—" Lister caught himself abruptly. Allen had told him, in the very strictest of confidence, of a proposed attempt to cut the Asiatic supply line to Alaska by a concentrated attack on Behring Strait, The Pacific fleet, idle since the engagement near the Marianas, was to sail secretly before dawn on Saturday.

  He glared. "Why do you ask such a question?" he snapped. "If I knew, I shouldn't tell, and you know it."

  Sally laughed. "Silly!" she chided. "It was just that I was considering having him and you and that flying detective, Jim Cass, to a little dinner at my apartment Saturday. You see, I still haven't met Jim Cass, and you've spoken of him so often that I'm curious. After all, if he's a friend of yours, Dick—"

  She smiled very tenderly at him.

  Lister shook his head. "Captain Cass is no friend of mine," he declared. "He's just an officer of the military intelligence who breezes into my laboratory from time to time, and pokes around looking for clues and trouble. He gives me the creeps. I never knew such a cold-blooded man! He'd turn his own mother over to a firing squad, if he thought it would help win the war."

  "Well, wouldn't you or I do as much for our country?" asked Sally. "And, besides, his very coldness intrigues me. I want to meet him."

  "Suit yourself," said Lister. "Have we time for another swim?"

  She puckered her lips disapprovingly. "Oh, no!' she exclaimed decidedly. "The water's so full of that horrible green slime that it's no pleasure to swim. Let's start back to town."

  "It is bad," he agreed. "It's just a variety of confervae—what we commonly call algae. There have been some complaints of it in the drinking water, too. It's harmless, but they ought to chlorinate the city reservoir." He rose and stretched. "Let's dress and get started, then."

  It was not quite 2:00 p. m. when they landed Sally's convertible helicopter in front of the building near the Presidio that served as the office and laboratory of the local unit of the Bureau of Military Biology and Bacteriology. Lister stepped reluctantly out of the machine, and turned to Sally at the wheel.

  "Tonight?" he asked hopefully.

  She shook her head. "Sorry. I have to dine with some family friends."

  "Tomorrow night, then?"

  "I shouldn't. I—"

  "But you will," he stated positively. "Heaven knows if I'll be stationed here long, and I don't want to waste a moment."

  "Why?" she asked sharply. "Do you expect to be transferred?"

  He bit his tongue. "No, but—"

  Needed distraction came. He whirled and s
aluted a dark, sinister-looking army officer descending the steps of the building.

  "Sally, here's Captain Cass at last. I thought he'd be in today! Sir, this is the Sally Amber you've heard me talking about so much."

  Jim Cass took the hand Sally extended. "No wonder Dick's been raving," he said, staring at her appraisingly with his cold, blue eyes. "I apologize for thinking he was nuts. I didn't believe he had the good taste—"

  His stare changed to a puzzled frown. "Say, haven't we met before?"

  "If we had," said Sally, "I wouldn't have forgotten it."

  But Captain Cass stood staring, long after her copter was indistinguishable among the cross currents of traffic.

  CASS was no closer to the solution when he dropped in on Lister the following day. The biologist, in laboratory smock, was busy with the war-time routine of checking water samples from half a dozen coastal cities, and had but little time to listen to his superior.

  "Oakland," he muttered, "bacterial count seven per c. c.; that's normal. Monterey, eleven; that's safe. Vera Cruz—say, did you ever see so much algae in the drinking water? Look at that beaker on the window sill. That's after two hours' exposure to sunlight, and it's as green as pea soup already. What's more, I saw reports from Chicago that it's just the same there. And —this is queer—from London as well."

  "What's that fuzz on the trees?" asked Cass thoughtfully, looking idly out of the window. "I never saw that here before."

  "Yeah. I noticed that. It's just a tree lichen, something like Spanish moss. A cryptogamous plant—that is, a spore-breeder. It's related to—— By the Lord! It's confervae, too, just like the alga!"

  "Well? So what?"

  "So nothing, except that whatever has stimulated the algae in the sea and in the drinking water, has also stimulated the lichens and the fungi. The cryptogamoids are the sort of plants that grew on earth during the carboniferous age, the age of coal."

  "Maybe we're in for another age of coal, huh?"

  "Hardly." said Lister, laughing. "There are several theories as to what caused the carboniferous age, such as a higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the air, or a world-wide tropical climate, or intense sun-spot activity, which would induce frequent and violent electrical storms on the earth, and hence produce an abnormal amount of ozone in the air. Ozone is a particularly dense form of oxygen, and is able to filter out the death rays—"

  "Death rays?" exclaimed Cass, pricking up his ears. He had been paying very little attention to Lister, but here was something in his own line—something the military intelligence ought to know about. "Death rays?"

  Lister laughed again. "Not the kind of death rays the army is interested in," he said. "But there are certain invisible rays of sunlight which have a fatal effect on living creatures. Ozone filters them out.

  "It's one of the remarkable instances of the balance of nature that there is normally just enough ozone in the outer layers of the atmosphere to keep out the quantity of that invisible light which would be fatal to human life, and yet let in just enough to keep the algae within reasonable bounds. Now if— Say! I wonder!"

  "You wonder what?"

  "Nothing! Nothing at all!"

  "Lister," said Cass pointedly, "you seem to be able to be very close-mouthed about some things, and to some people. I wonder how you are with women."

  "What do you mean?" asked Lister, with a guilty premonition.

  "Well, for example, you didn't happen to say anything to Miss Amber about the sailing of the fleet, did you?"

  Lister flushed. He hadn't, of course; and yet she might have gathered it from some of his remarks. But then, what if she had?

  "Of course not," he growled. "Speaking of the fleet," he added, "I'm going over to see Admiral Allen right now."

  ARRIVED at the admiral's quarters, Lister came directly to the point. "Sir," he said, "I've been thinking about all these algae. At the rate they are increasing, you may find your whole fleet stalled in a mass of jelly before you get to Behring Strait."

  "I've thought of that," Admiral Allen replied soberly, and yet with a twinkle in his eyes which Lister couldn't quite fathom.

  "But have you heard the latest reports, sir?" Lister persisted. "The Chicago River is clogged. The stuff is beginning to plug the water mains everywhere. I know it's becoming a nuisance here in San Francisco. In Texas, the Spanish moss is beginning to collect in masses heavy enough to break tree branches.

  "All over the country railroad ties are turning into pulpy beds of assorted fungi, puffballs, and a hundred other varieties. The resulting decay has even caused derailings. In the moister areas, trains actually have to plow their way through vast accumulations of lichens, which have found the shaded cuts and half-decayed ties an ideal environment in which to exercise their new vitality."

  "It's even worse in Asia," the admiral replied. "They say that on the tundras the lichens are growing into heaps like haystacks on the railroads, and that the algae have blocked rivers and caused floods. That's why, even at the risk of getting our entire fleet stuck in the slime, we must attack the Khan while this unexplainable growth of plants is endangering his source of supplies."

  "I didn't know that," said Lister.

  "Well, keep it under your hat, and don't breathe it to a soul. It is secret information that has just come in from the intelligence service. Have you any idea as to the reason for all this? I was just going to send for you, when you showed up."

  "Something may have caused an abnormal increase in the ozone of the outer layers of the atmosphere, and this ozone may be filtering out those wave lengths of sunlight which ordinarily hold algae in check."

  But Admiral Allen was one of those practical men who have little patience with scientific explanations of anything. So he suggested, "Might it not be some new device of Asiatic warfare?"

  "I hardly think so, sir. The Khan wouldn't use this weapon which appears to be hurting him even worse than it is us."

  II.

  THAT EVENING, when Dick Lister and Sally Amber were seated in a restaurant, she again broached the subject of the algae.

  "I hear it's even worse in Asia than in America," she said.

  "How do you happen to know that?" he asked in surprise.

  "It's so, then? Oh, everybody isn't so close-mouthed as you, Dick," she replied demurely. She raised her lovely dark, innocent eyes.

  "Do you suppose it might be an Asiatic weapon? Or perhaps—since it seems to be even worse in Siberia than here—an American weapon?"

  Embarrassed, he mumbled, "How should I know?"

  "But you do know something about it, don't you?" she shot at him.

  Caught off guard, he stumbled. "Eh ? Oh—why, yes. The Beckerley fields –" He broke off, frowning in irritation.

  "Sally," he growled, "that curiosity of yours is going to get you into trouble one of these days. This is wartime, and feminine curiosity is no excuse for pumping officers. I know that you are O. K., but others might not trust you. How'd you like to stand court-martial as an Asiatic spy, just because you ask too many questions?"

  "Perhaps I am one," said the girl, smiling and raising her delicately penciled brows.

  "It's no joking matter, Sally. People have been shot against a wall for less than that."

  "I can see," said the girl dryly, "that Captain Cass has been lecturing you."

  "How—" began Lister, then bit his lip.

  "How do I know? Oh, I can read men like a book—any woman can. Captain Cass doesn't like me. And I don't like men who don't like me."

  She pouted prettily.

  "I'm glad he doesn't," declared Lister. "It would suit me if nobody liked you, but me."

  HE RECALLED this conversation the next evening, when Cass strolled nosily into his laboratory, where he was working late over some analyses.

  "Nice mess of algae," Cass observed, squinting at Lister's experimental tank. "They say the stuff is clogging the Atlantic harbors."

  "You could damn near walk across the Golden Gate this morning
," Lister replied, and went on to detail the latest news: train schedules disrupted in the northwest, ships stuck in harbors everywhere, even in the open seas, particularly the north Pacific.

  But Captain Cass was not listening. He was leaning over Lister's glass-topped desk, peering intently at something beneath the glass—a snapshot.

  "What's this?" he asked sharply.

  "Just a snap of Sally. Not a very good one; print's blurred."

  "Um!" said Cass. His eyes narrowed. Then he said, irrelevantly, "Have you any theory about what's causing all this growth of algae?"

  "Yes," Lister admitted, pursing up his lips judiciously. "But I'm not going off half-cocked. When I've verified certain points, I shall report to Washington—not to the intelligence service."

  "Well, seeing as you won't tell the intelligence service anything, the intelligence service will tell you something—and for your own good. Listen carefully, and don't fly off the handle: I was attached to the Harbin legation three years ago, before the war. I got to know a lot about the Khan's eastern capital. Maybe you never heard of the woman called Princess Stephanie—or did you?"

  "Yes. What about her?"

  "Wait a minute. Stephanie was the daughter of Dmitri Kazarov, the Khan's chancellor. He was killed fifteen years ago in the Japanese revolution, and the Khan himself took over the raising of Stephanie. It wasn't given much publicity, but, in a town like Harbin, people talk, and they were still talking when I was there. It seemed the Khan gave her a queer education—a very queer one."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean he raised her to be the greatest spy in history. She was taught every important language, and to speak each like a native. She was taught to be at ease in every situation and every level of society. She learned military science, so as to be able to identify important information. And, when it began to be evident that she was going to be a very beautiful girl, she was even taught the knowledge of human nature! But above all—above all, I say—she learned to be cold and heartless, and immune to love. She can act the part of a woman in love, but there is no feeling in her—no feeling except the desire to serve Asia!"