“That may be true, but your idea that it will stop an army is nonsense. No soldier was checked just by a smell.”
“But this will stop them. I have a little bottle here. It has one drop of the end slime diluted a thousand times. Have one of your officers smell it.”
“Any volunteers?” asked the King.
“Certainly,” answered the Chief of Artillery. “I have been in three wars and have smelled everything horrible known to any form of campaign. It will never hurt me.”
The inventor held the opened bottle under the military man’s nose. Roughly, the soldier took two deep sniffs. Then Billings corked the bottle, while the volunteer slumped from the chair down to the floor and lay there, white, sweating, and vomiting. The others hastened to help him loosen his collar.
“My God!” exclaimed the King. “Just two whiffs from a bottle containing a thousandth of a drop, and each dead Yeast Man produces thirty pounds of the stuff. Will it kill?”
“Not men, but plants,” was Billing’s reply. “Look at this.” He emptied the bottle on a large clay jar holding a blooming cyclamen. At once the plant withered and died. A curious foetid smell filled the room. The King rose hastily and sought an opened window. So did the rest seek open doors and windows, while carrying the fainting Chief of the Artillery Service with them.
As soon as they got outside the room, in the pure air, the King turned to the inventor.
“Show me just one man like those you describe, Mr. Billings—just one man—and the resources of the kingdom are at your command.”
“I have made them. I have one now that is nearly three days old. My assistants have been leading him around an old deserted race track. You see, they go in a straight line unless they are led, and the only way we could keep him under observation was to lead him around in a track.”
“We will go and see him,” said the King, “and we will take with us the Professor of Mathematics from the University. Gentlemen, follow us in your cars.” The party reassembled at an old race track, overgrown with grass and a quarter mile in circumference. Slowly walking around this track was an assistant from the Moronian laboratories. Other men were resting on a bench. The walking man held a rope and was leading by it a peculiar creature. It was a Yeast Man.
Imagine a six-foot man of dough, with a crust hard enough to hold it erect, yet viscid enough to allow it to move forward. A creature with a head but no face, with spade-like hands without fingers, and instead of two legs and feet, simply—simply a body like a skirt, which rested firmly on the ground on a two-foot base. It was the convulsive movement of this base and the mass of fermenting yeast above it that in some way enabled it to move slowly over the ground. It was such a creature, with a broad canvas band around its waist, that the Moronians saw being led around the track. Mr. Billings ran forward eagerly and conferred with his men. Then he returned to the group of officers surrounding the King.
“They report that it had gone around the track ninety-nine times. That is twenty-three miles and nearly twenty-four. It was four feet tall at the end of the first day and at the end of the second day it was full grown. It is now nearly three days old, and if our calculations are correct, it will soon die.” The Yeast Man slowly moved around the track. Just in front of the tumbled-down grandstand it stopped. Billings instructed his men to take off the canvas belt. The party gathered around the motionless figure. Suddenly it began to grow shorter and stouter. It swayed, and finally out of balance, started to fall forward, bending at the waist. An unpleasant odor filled the air. Suddenly it bent double, and literally melted into a pool of greenish yellow slime. The odor grew increasingly frightful, so that it drove the observers further and yet further away. The grass touched by the slime withered and died.
The King turned to the professor of mathematics. “Professor,” he said, “estimate the size of that puddle. Multiply it by five billion. Estimate the territory filled with that odor. Suppose such masses, five billion such masses, were scattered equally over Eupenia. What would be the result?”
The professor figured on the back of an old envelope. He used the stub of a short pencil which he nervously stuck in his mouth after every fifth figure. Finally he said, “If you could arrange to have them die at different places, the whole of Eupenia would be covered about six inches deep.”
The King turned to his staff.
“I am satisfied, gentlemen. We will have hundreds of these machines made, and when we are ready to begin operations, Mr. Billings can make five thousand Yeast Men to start with. Our citizens can lead them for three days, and just as they are about to die, we will turn them loose on all the highways and open spaces leading to Eupenia. At the same time, we will start making them by the million. Our attack will come before the enemy’s ready. If it works, we will obtain a bloodless victory. The only way we can make a success of it is to spring it on them as a total surprise. Cut all the wires leading to Eupenia. Confiscate at once all the radio sets. Be more careful than ever in watching the suspected spies. It would not be a bad idea to imprison them till this is over. Put a triple guard on the border. Permit no intercommunication. Turn over the entire resources of the kingdom to Mr. Billings and his associates. At the same time do not omit a single item leading to the preparedness of our little army. I understood Von Dort to say that we would be attacked on the first October. We will attack before then—just as soon as Billings is ready. Have any of you a suggestion?”
“Yes,” said the Chief of Artillery, still pale and sweating from his recent nausea. “Why not let me follow the Yeast Men up and blow them to pieces with shrapnel? Make five yeast pieces and five stench pots out of each Yeast Man?”
“I think,” replied the King, “that the Eupenians will be only too anxious to do that work for us. Again I repeat, gentlemen, that we must observe the greatest secrecy. Keep the anti-aircraft machines in constant operation, especially on cloudy days. May God save our Country and bless our good friend, Mr. Billings. Now, Gentlemen, to work, day and night, without rest, to make this machinery, gather an abundance of material and train men to use the machines.”
* * * *
Near every road connecting the two countries, large canvas camouflage screens were erected. Captive observation balloons sent up by the Eupenian air service reported no massing of Moronian troops. Behind these canvas screens, however, thousands of the men and women of the little mountain kingdom took turns leading five thousand Yeast Men in their monotonous journey toward death. All day and all night on the 17th, 18th and 19th of September, these five thousand Yeast Men moved and grew behind the protecting curtains. Their genesis had been so timed that at dusk on the third day they were two days, twenty-three hours and thirty minutes old. Then they were turned loose on the main highways and were started on their slow shuffle toward Eupenia. Some, of course, were checked at the border barricades. Others crawled around or over and had advanced several hundred yards into the enemy’s country before dissolution occurred.
In the meantime peculiar-looking machine guns were being placed at intervals of one mile, each manned by a group of trained Moronian soldiers. These guns were simple in construction, and mounted on sturdy tripods. Above each was a small hopper, from which yeast was fed to a small but powerful press operated by condensed air. Each blow of the ram produced a Yeast Man one-eighth of an inch high. These were dropped into the barrel of the gun and were blown out into the air several hundred feet away from the gun. Like thistle down they floated, gradually dropping to the ground, base downward and head erect. Immediately on touching the earth, they began their peculiar shuffling movement, which was to continue in the exact direction in which they had started. As the guns worked, they revolved slowly through a forty-five degree horizontal arc.
Each gun fired two Yeast Men a second. That meant one hundred and twenty a minute; seven thousand, two hundred an hour, or 172,800 in the course of twenty-four hours. There were seven hundred guns made, but only about five hundred were in actual use at any one time; the others acti
ng as replacements. Counting the total time these five hundred guns were in use, it was later estimated that they were fired about ten days. This made a total of 1,728,000 for each gun, or a grand total of eight hundred and sixty-four million Yeast Men manufactured during the campaign. Each Yeast Man, dead, produced thirty pounds of end-slime, a total of 12,960,000 tons. It will be remembered that this slime, in a one-to-a-thousand dilution, was sufficiently strong to produce disabling vomiting.
These guns began operations twenty-four hours before the five thousand fully-grown Yeast Men were liberated. They then moved slowly forward, and behind them came successive waves of smaller and yet smaller men of dough. At the end of the first twenty-four hours, the oldest of the Yeast Men who had been shot from the five hundred guns, were nearly four feet high. The woods and fields of Eupenia bordering on Moronia were dotted with the peculiar creatures.
The statement made by Mr. Billings that he would be able to manufacture them by the billions never materialized. The machines worked more slowly than he had anticipated. It was also seen that a large number were caught in trees and ravines and were unable to continue their march. Yet a sufficient number reached the smooth highways and level pastures to do everything that was required of them. Also the work was facilitated later in the campaign by mounting the guns in airplanes and literally showering the towns and cities with the little fellows. This, however, was not attempted till it was seen that the morale of the Eupenians was completely destroyed.
* * * *
During the entire campaign not a single Moronian died of injuries incident to warfare, though time and again many of them fell exhausted from lack of sleep. The radium workers not only received painful burns but were affected for several years as the result of the prolonged exposure to the mysterious emanations from the weird element. These, however, were but slight horrors of war compared with what might have happened had the Eupenian attack found the Moronians in their previous defenseless condition.
During September, 1930, all had been active in the kingdom dominated by Premier Plautz, who was the real ruler of Eupenia, in place of the feeble-minded King. All branches of the army, including the aviation section, had been mobilized. Fifty thousand trained and well-armed men were in camp ready to begin the destruction of the little mountainous kingdom of Moronia. The attack was timed to begin on the first of October. Premier Plautz no longer was content with his usual statement that Moronia must be destroyed. He was now saying that the time had come for the actual work of destruction to begin. An interesting fact was that the escape of Col. Von Dort and his admission into Moronia as a place of refuge was to be made the actual causa belli. On the thirtieth of September his surrender was to be demanded within twenty-four hours. If it were not conceded, the Eupenian army would at once advance. If the demand were complied with, the army would advance anyway. Moronia, as far as Premier Plautz was concerned, had to be destroyed.
A broad highway connected the capital cities of the two kingdoms. This was the road used by Von Dort in his dramatic flight for safety. It was here at the border that he had crashed through the barricade. At this point, the Eupenian border guard was commanded by Lieutenant Kraut, and under him was a company of ninety privates and noncommissioned officers. On the evening of the nineteenth of September, the Lieutenant was writing his daily report and wishing for something to happen to relieve the deadly monotony of daily routine. Just as he had finished this report and was signing it, a sentry rushed in and stated that a number of peculiar looking naked men were at the boundary gate trying to enter the country. Suspecting a trap, the Lieutenant at once called his entire force to arms and personally investigated the matter. When he approached the barricade, he was astonished to see a number of grayish white creatures, six feet high, moving aimlessly on the other side of the gate. They had heads without features, bodies without legs, arms without fingers. Cautiously, he touched one and shivered at the peculiar soft sensation that was imparted by the animal’s skin. Realizing that his men were watching him closely and that any sign of nervousness on his part would be communicated to them, and feeling certain, too, that each of the peculiar shapes was but a mask and cloak for a Moronian soldier, he drew his revolver and shot one of the odd things several times through the heart section. The bullet holes closed and there was no blood. The thing kept on with its curious shuffling movement.
“Attention, men,” he commanded. “Open the gates and we will take them all prisoners. God knows what they are, but they cannot hurt us anyway, and we will hold them till tomorrow and then send them in trucks to the General-in-Chief.”
His men obeyed the command but there were many more of the new creatures than there were soldiers and thus while over seventy were captured, several hundred passed the barricade and started moving down the road.
In the guard-house the telephone was ringing violently. Headquarters wanted to know if anything new had developed and whether Lieut. Kraut and his command were safe. Disquieting messages were being received from the other outposts and they wanted an immediate report. Lieut. Kraut started to tell about the peculiar things he had captured, and the Major at the other end of the line reprimanded him for being drunk again. The Lieutenant protested that he was perfectly sober. The Major demanded an exact description of the new animal. The Lieutenant had one brought into his office and held near his desk while he gave a verbal description over the telephone. Even while he was talking, the animal softened and started to melt. The Lieutenant described the process as long as he could talk. Even while writhing on the floor in deadly nausea and vomiting, he tried to tell what had happened, but his retching only convinced the Major at Headquarters that the Lieutenant was beastly drunk. Finally the Lieutenant was dragged out of the office by two of his men, who waded through pools of indescribable filth to rescue him. He was too sick to realize that his entire command had fled from the Post, though here and there one of the soldiers lay on the road too sick to move. Outside, the road was impassable on account of the puddles of slime which dotted it. Cursing and vomiting, the Lieutenant staggered through the dark woods, seeking pure air and freedom from the stench, which even in memory produced a recurrence of the prostrating nausea.
Meantime those of the novel creatures who still lived were shuffling slowly down the broad highway, every few minutes losing one of their number by death and decay. In the dark hours of the night they died unseen and unmourned, but each of them left behind a horrible evidence that they had once lived. Over the pools of slime others of their kind walked, some three feet high, others a foot high and here and there could be seen midgets only a few inches high but resembling their larger brothers in every detail. When the sun rose, there also arose from every road between the two kingdoms, the smell of death a million times magnified. It was as though Moronia were surrounded by a circle of decay three miles deep. Meantime the smaller, younger Yeast Men were advancing into Eupenia, through the woods and meadows, tumbling into ravines, catching fast in trees and bushes, falling into streams and being swept away in the current, and yet ever with a sound like soft snow falling, the little ones, new born, were floating down through the air like goose down, and on and on the machines along the border of Moronia kept up their gentle thump-thump-thump and with each thump was created one more new life, one more soldier, brainless, fearless, bloodless, filled with the urge to keep on moving till dissolution came. And they all moved downhill, from the mountainous Moronia, into the enemies’ more level country. They were perfect soldiers.
All the Eupenian out-posts had experienced the same novel sensations and made the same report that was made by Lieutenant Kraut as soon as he was able to talk. None of the officers who came to headquarters to report could produce any proof that they really had seen such massive monstrosities. Every officer had to periodically stop his verbal report till another period of vomiting had passed. The Commander-in-Chief thoroughly believed that they had gone drunk and insane through the effects of cheap whiskey and put them all under arrest. At the same ti
me he sent several spies on motorcycles to make a thorough investigation. These returned babbling hysterically of an army of creatures of all sizes, and every spy was vomiting with the same enthusiastic persistency that the officers had shown. The Commander-in-Chief began to curse the morals of his army and went and started to get “drunk” himself.
Even then Eupenia might have saved herself, though it is a question as to just how efficacious any campaign of shrapnel, or any building of fences or digging of ditches, would have proved. What really happened was no doubt inevitable, yet the fact remains, and it is of historical importance, that twenty-four hours passed before any offensive was started. Data was gathered and observations and lengthy reports were made. Otherwise nothing was done. These reports, especially from the border regions, were of such a varied and fantastic nature that little value could be placed on them.
Finally Premier Plautz decided to personally investigate the situation. He took with him the Chief-of-Staff and a group of scientists from the University. They found the new creatures by the hundreds of thousands and of all sizes. They also came as near as they could to several of the puddles of end-slime. An effort to observe these carefully with the aid of gas masks was useless. Even when some of the foetid material was gathered at the end of a long pole, it could not be brought close enough to make any observations of value. Several of the things were carefully studied, both chemically and anatomically, but not a single observer connected the moving oddities with the pools of decay. It must be remembered that after the first hour of the offensive no more Yeast Men had died, and the reports of the rapid dissolution of the first wave were entirely discredited.
For the first time in his life, Premier Plautz was at a loss to know what to do. To him the entire situation was incomprehensible. At one side of his automobile a five foot abortion was slowly moving, its featureless face asking only one question. “Why was I made?” In the Premier’s hand was a watch crystal and on the glass was a new creation, barely a quarter of an inch high, in every respect the exact duplicate of its brother standing by the side of the can.
The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D. Page 13