The Flying Eyes

by J. Hunter Holly

  As he sliced the meat, he could hear them in the living room, their voices low, talking and laughing. And piled on top of the other great failures of the day, this one exploded all out of proportion until he finally found a scapegoat for his anger and disappointment: Wes, the professed friend who took every opportunity to stab him in the back, and in the exact spot where he knew it would hurt most.

  * * * *

  It was dark outside, ten o’clock dark, when a knock sounded on his bedroom door. He raised up from the pillow where he hadn’t found even the peace of a nap, and called, “Come in.”

  It was Wes.

  “Has Kelly gone home?” Linc asked.

  “No. She’s going to stay the night—in the housekeeper’s room. She’s too frightened to go home. People have gone crazy, Linc. They’re looting private homes now, and a girl isn’t safe alone.”

  “Are you sure she’s safe here?”

  Wes glanced up quickly, estimating the meaning behind the words.

  “You two were laughing it up pretty heavy down there. With her staying in the house—”

  “Now, wait just a minute!” Wes’ face was red. “Just because you—”

  “Just because I nothing. You hand me a long line about not caring a damn for Kelly, but you latch onto her quick enough whenever you get the chance.”

  “She wanted comfort, and you refused to give it, so I did. One human being to another. No more.”

  “You must be a saint. Do you know that? You’re so full of compassion and philosophy, you must be a saint.”

  Wes sighed. “A minute ago, I was a heel, and now I’m a saint. Make up your mind, Linc. Which is it?”

  “Time will tell that. Meanwhile, I think I’ll sleep downstairs where I can keep an eye on her door.”

  Wes’ hands were clenched, and the same fighting look Linc had seen in him this morning stared back at him now. “I’d like to knock your head off,” Wes growled. “I’ve taken a lot from you—making excuses, trying to find something in you to like. But I guess I was wrong. Collins and the men at the lab have you pegged. You’re an egotist—an overbearing, swaggering egotist, so sure of yourself and your own cockeyed judgments that you stink. Your trouble is you don’t know how to accept a friend. I thought last night maybe you’d learned. But you only made it sound good. When it comes down to it, you’re still alone, and want it that way.”

  Linc’s own hands were clenching into fists. He wanted to make physical contact. It seemed a certain, sure relief.

  Wes backed off two steps. “I’m not going to fight with you. It’s not worth it—not over this accusation. You’d win, anyway. I’m no match for you physically. But if you measure by heart or decency—then, friend, you fall so short it’s pitiful. And all because of that woman. She’ll ruin you yet, Linc. She’s got you by the tail and she’ll turn you inside out, if you’re not careful.”

  He strode from the room and slammed the door behind him. Linc sat on the edge of the bed, his fists still clenched in unvented anger. He threw himself across the bed. The hell with Wes and Kelly. The Eyes were more important. He had been wrong this morning, dead wrong, and the realization threw him. He felt unsure of himself and he had to remedy that. Unless he was competent in his work, nothing would ever matter again. He’d find a way to destroy the Eyes yet. He’d find a way to redeem himself.

  * * * *

  Two days passed. The National Guard moved in and was beginning to contain the town. But the Eyes remained.

  Linc spent the days mostly alone, wrapped in depression. Kelly was gone, and the atmosphere in the house was strained, constantly edging on a near fight between the two men.

  On the third morning, the dim ringing of the phone brought Linc out of a fitful sleep, and he dressed and went down to the kitchen. Wes was there, drinking coffee.

  “Was that the phone?” Linc asked.

  “It was,” Wes answered. “Iverson with the latest news.”

  Wes’ short tone sent Linc to the stove, where he plopped some oleo into a frying pan and dumped in two eggs. Wes knew what he wanted. He could volunteer the information.

  “The National Guard has been nosing around, asking for information on the hole in the woods,” Wes opened up.

  “It is a hole then?”

  “It is. A big one. The people go down into it. And they don’t come back up. Some of the observers don’t make it back either.”

  “But it is a hole.” Linc was glad of the confirmation. If it was a hole, a known thing, then his nightmarish imaginings could be cast aside. “Has it always been there?”

  “The farmers in the area and the game warden out there say it just appeared. There’s talk about an explosion out that way, the same night the light was reported streaking over town. The light you called an idiot’s hallucination.”

  “So I was wrong again,” he said. “And you’re pleased to be able to prove it to me.”

  “Iverson has a straight Linc to Washington now. They’re sending somebody out.” Wes refused to take the bait and add fuel to the quarrel. “But nobody has a solution. No protection has been found. The Eyes are still leading people away.”

  Linc put his plate on the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “I thought I’d go in to the lab today.”

  “Iverson says there’s no need. Nothing’s going on out there. I’m staying here. I don’t see much sense in running back and forth when there’s nothing to be accomplished.”

  “That’s fine with me. I guess the last few days have proved that we were never meant to be a team anyway. A little crisis, and we tear out each other’s throats.”

  ****

  The lab was being run by a skeleton crew. None of the project work was going on, but a certain number of men had to be there to keep tabs on the reactor.

  Iverson glanced up from his paper-strewn desk. “I told Wes there wasn’t any need for you to come,” he said.

  “I know. But you’re here, so why not me?”

  “I won’t say I’m not glad, but I really don’t see what good you can do. Things are getting worse. That’s all the news there is.”

  “I saw the soldiers. Sooner or later they’ll calm the place down.”

  “I don’t know, Linc. The panic’s spreading. People are jumping the gun all over the county. Everyone’s afraid the Eyes will widen their activities and the towns around here are turning into ghost towns. People are running. So, in the long run, if we should need them to help, they won’t be there.”

  “Maybe they’re smart. The Eyes might spread.”

  “Don’t even think that.” Iverson shuddered. “If they can make such a shambles here, what could they do to the whole country? I’m at my wits’ end, Linc. Washington seems to be holding us responsible for some solution. They’re sending a man out, yes, but they expect us to have something to tell him. Of course, they have some ideas of their own. They think the attack was a good plan and they want the Guard to try it again.”

  “Oh, no!” It was Linc’s turn to shudder. The first failure had been his fault, and another failure would reflect on him, too—still his idea, still his guilt. “They wouldn’t have any more chance than we did.”

  “Washington thinks they would. Where we could only inflict small, single wounds, the Guard will have big weapons. They can blow the things apart.”

  “And they can turn into zombies just as easily as those boys.”

  Iverson stared at him, his face ashen. “I don’t suppose you’ve been outside of town—out toward the hole?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s a sight you wouldn’t easily forget. The soldiers drove me out there in a Jeep. The roads are crammed with people—four rows deep—all lost to us, all zombies. How do they do it, Linc?” Iverson’s voice rose in desperation. “What do they do, and how?”

  “I’ve been working that over in my mind for two
days. The answer is obvious: hypnosis.”

  “Oh, now!” Iverson was shaking his head.

  “Don’t slough it off before you’ve given it a chance. I was out on that field with them and downtown with them. I felt their pull. It’s so strong it’s like a physical tug. I resisted it—I was angry and I resisted, but I felt it drawing me.”

  “Yet you resisted it.”

  “That’s the proof of my point. I’ve got a strong will, Doc. I impose it on everybody, so you should know. And that will save me. It saved the others who returned. The boys—the unformed, groping, boys—didn’t have a chance. The Eyes hypnotized them before they knew what to resist.”

  Iverson was quiet, staring at his hands. “If you’re right, how can they be stopped? How can we fight such a thing? It’s beyond our power.”

  “You’ve overlooked the main point, Doc. If the Eyes can hypnotize, then there must be a mentality behind them. Right?”

  “I suppose I knew that, anyway. They act intelligently.”

  “Then what we should do is try to reach that mentality and study it. Maybe in that way we can discover how to destroy them.”

  “You’re leading up to something.”

  “The only thing I can think of as our next action. I want to capture an Eye, Dr. Iverson. I want to capture one and study it—inside and out.”

  Iverson showed no enthusiasm. He didn’t show much of anything.

  “Should I take your silence to be disapproval?” Linc asked.

  “No. You make sense, as usual, but the idea is so tenuous—it depends on so many ‘ifs.’ How will you capture one? How will you study it? Even if you do, will it work? I can’t help but feel the Guard has the right idea. Blow them apart and rid our skies of them.”

  Linc sat back. He had expected more appreciation of his suggestion. “At least give me your permission to try.”

  “Well—” Iverson’s answer was cut short by the clang of bells and a siren wail. He sat bolt upright in his chair. Linc was already on his feet. The bells were the external alarm on the reactor. Something was wrong in the atomic pile.

  Iverson grabbed up his direct line to the reactor and spat questions into the phone, “Where? Why aren’t they inside? Who?”

  When he hung up, he hissed at Linc, “Somebody’s in the reactor. He hit the guard over the head and broke in. He’s sending the pile crazy. It’s going to go sky-high!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Linc raced out of the administration building and across the grass toward the reactor. A man was waving frantically at the entrance. Blood seeped down his neck from a cut on his head.

  “Who’s inside?” Linc fired the question.

  “I don’t know! Everybody left for coffee, and this guy must have sneaked up behind me. I felt the blow—then nothing. When I woke up, the alarms were sounding. Is she going to blow?”

  “Pray!” Linc ran inside, making for the locker room and the radiation suits. The bells were continuous explosions against his eardrums, and lights flashed in the corridors, yellow lights, danger lights. He pulled open the first locker he reached, yanked out the suit, and struggled to get it on. But the light over the door changed from yellow to red, and there was no time. It was now or never. If he had a chance of saving the pile at all, he had to move now.

  He grabbed up a lapel radiation indicator and stuck it in his pocket. It was already turning color, warning of danger. He took off down the hall again, heading through the maze of corridors toward the building center and the pile itself. Fear trembled inside him as the lights flashed and the bells clanged.

  He rounded the last corner leading to the main room, and stopped. Ahead of him, lit by the flashing red of the warning lights, moved the slim figure of a man. It halted, too, and they faced each other for a brief second. Then the man darted sideways into another hallway. Linc took out after him. He didn’t know how to operate the reactor, but the man, the cause of the danger, could be removed.

  He turned the corner and saw the fleeing figure ahead of him. He pushed himself into a sprint. The hall was dark, bursting with red flashes, and they two were alone, hunter and hunted, both running through the tangible tension of impending atomic disaster.

  With a great leap, Linc was on the man, pulling him down from behind. He fell on top of him, but the man rolled free and regained his feet. Linc was up, and before he even identified the face in front of him, his fist was crashing into it. The man fought back, and a fistful of knuckles caught Linc’s jaw. The wall close to his back kept him from falling, and he thrust himself forward, hitting and slashing wildly, overpowering his target with the sheer fury of his attack. Finally, the man went limp before him, and sank down the wall to collapse on the floor.

  Linc forced air into his lungs and ran back down the hall. Whether he knew how to stop the reaction or not, he had to try. He threw open the door to the main room, and stopped. The room was full of radiation-suited technicians, already working to deaden the build-up, lowering the leads into place to stem the frantic circular dash of destruction.

  “Get out of here!” somebody yelled at him. “You need a suit!”

  Linc suddenly realized his vulnerability and panic washed over him, a great hot wave from his solar plexus, taking his breath and hazing his vision. He caught hold of himself and hurried out. He stopped for the unconscious body of the man he had caught and beaten, and lugged him up over his shoulders. He carried him to the nearest exit, out into the clean air, and dropped him onto the grass.

  He stood there, trembling. Had he gotten too much radiation? Had it already started to eat at him? He thrust a shaky hand into his pocket and pulled out the lapel indicator. Already, over the door, the lights had changed back to flashing yellow. He held the indicator up, afraid to acknowledge what he was sure he would see.

  But it was all right. It hadn’t reached the critical point. He had gotten out in time. The sigh that roared out of him came from deep in his soul.

  The man at his feet stirred, and Linc looked at him closely, peering beneath the smeared dirt that darkened the face. It was a familiar face that stared up into his. Hendricks.

  “Hendricks!” Linc knelt, but Hendricks didn’t hear. He was conscious, but his eyes were dull, glazed over. Linc recalled the last time he had seen the man—the morning of the fight, walking away with the Eyes. From the look of him, Hendricks still belonged to the Eyes. He was still hypnotized, still under their power.

  Linc faced the impact of what that meant. Hendricks had been sent to blow the reactor, sent to destroy the lab. Why?

  That why? was the most important thing in the world.

  Someone ran up beside him, the technician, Bennet. “We got it under control,” he panted. “It’s going to be all right.” Bennet knelt quickly beside Hendricks and peered into his face, rubbed his head and hair. “There’s something wrong with him.”

  “He’s still a zombie.”

  “I don’t mean that. He’s sick. Sick to death, by the look of him.”

  Linc searched vainly for the symptoms Bennet had seen. “A disease?”

  “Radiation sickness. That’s how it appears to me.”

  “From his stay in the reactor?” Linc was doubtful.

  “Must be.”

  “But I got out all right.”

  “He was inside longer, and closer to the pile than you were.”

  Linc rose. “I’ll get a doctor. Iverson will probably want him treated here. A case of radiation sickness would only add to the panic downtown.”

  He strode away. Hendricks’ illness would be turned over to men who were competent in that area. For himself, he had to move ahead with his own plans. And he had to make certain that no more reactor technicians were lost to the Eyes. Their diabolical use of Hendricks, and Hendricks’ special knowledge, was sure warning of what they would do with any more they managed to hire away.

  * * *
*

  Hendricks was dead. Linc’s brief nap was broken by that news. Hendricks was dead. In addition, a certain Colonel Stanley had arrived from Washington, and the National Guard had gone out to battle the Eyes.

  It was Wes who stood over him and pelted off the sentences. “This colonel wants both of us in on the briefings.”

  “So now we’re going to have briefings and be military,” Linc sighed. “I take it then that Iverson hasn’t given permission for my plan.”

  “No. He told me about it, but he hasn’t decided. I imagine his decision depends on what the Guard accomplishes.”

  “Which will be nothing.” He ran his hand across his blond hair to put it back in place. “Did Hendricks come out of his trance long enough to talk?”

  “No. He just died. That’s a mystery, too. He shouldn’t have died so fast—not from the effects of the reactor. But it was radiation that killed him, all right.”

  Linc shook his head. “If we try to solve them all, we’ll bury ourselves. First things first. Let’s go meet the brass.”

  Colonel Stanley was waiting with Iverson and Collins. He was a short man, muscular and tense. He strode about like a cock rooster and demanded attention. It was clear that he intended to add discipline to the fight, and win it through sheer routine.

  “Glad to meet you,” he said when Linc and Wes were introduced. “If you’ll please sit down, I’ll fill you in on what Washington has discovered.

  “First off—” Stanley’s clipped words dominated the quiet—“this is a local phenomenon you’re experiencing. Whether or not it will spread, is something we’re concerned with, since there is every indication that it will. Following down the line of facts, we know that your phenomenon started with a roaring light that passed over your city, followed by an explosion in the woods.

  “Investigation has shown that your roaring light wasn’t the only one of its kind. Two weeks previous, a similar phenomenon was seen over our Western testing grounds. A week previous to that, the Russian bomb-test sites reported the same occurrence. Consequently, we can expect what has happened here to be duplicated at either of these two places, or almost anywhere else.