“The poor fellow must have been hit with shrapnel or something near the heart and just managed to get this far,” he said bitterly. “He’s dead—”
Sykes paused, picked up the box and handed it to the dazed girl.
“Here, you’d better take it. He entrusted it to you.”
Eva took it in nerveless fingers. “Those fiends!” she sobbed. “I’ll never rest until—”
Sykes gripped the girl’s shoulders firmly. “Now listen, Eva,” he said, “nobody around here is half as burned up about this as I am!” The veins stood out angrily on the Earth ambassador’s strained forehead. “But right now, we’ve got to go after these devils coldly, calculatingly. If we lose our heads, they’ll wipe us out to the last man. This is a scientific war, Eva—not a man to man struggle—”
“Mr. Sykes is right, you know, Miss Wayne,” a voice from the doorway observed deliberately.
They wheeled around together, startled to behold the figure of Dr. Brown standing there, a peculiar expression on his round face. It struck Howard Sykes that the cosmic engineer was trying to look vicious and yet did not really want to. His voice, however, was tinged with cold venom.
“I suppose all this butchery and destruction is your doing?” Sykes demanded, moving forward. “Just what’s the idea? How long do you think you can get away with it?”
“I don’t need to ‘get away’ with anything—the work’s finished.” Brown, self-confessed peace lover, made the admission with studied complacency.
“It was necessary to destroy the headquarters of the Eugenics, Biological, and Welfare Zones because they are superfluous. Such sciences will be needless in the New Order. The three dominant sciences of astronomy, cosmic engineering, and physics will now hold the field and dictate future terms.”
“Just what ‘new order’ are you talking about?” Eva shouted. “What fiendish plan are you mapping out now? You killed Dr. Hendriks, and—”
“For various reasons, it is necessary that three sciences alone should dominate Mars—and later, the Earth,” Brown replied calmly. “Those scientists who are left from other departments will be under our control from now on—those who escaped death, I mean—as you did,” he said meaningfully.
Brown smiled coldly. “The city—in fact, the whole planet—will come under the control of myself, and Doctors Latham and Poste, the heads of the Astronomy and Cosmic Engineering Zones,” he said. “We plan a Triumvirate, a scientific domination for reasons which will only become apparent as time goes on. We have planned it perfectly and the whole army of research workers, men and women, who have worked with us are entirely in accord with our aims.
“As for you, Miss Wayne, you are a prisoner, of course—or I should say, a worker, under our dictates. You will be transferred from useless biology to cosmic engineering.”
She shook her head firmly. “Not if I know it!”
“The alternative,” Brown murmured, his dark eyes gleaming, “is death.”
He turned then to Howard Sykes. “You, Mr. Sykes, are the ambassador from Earth,” Brown went on, ignoring the girl entirely. “You will return to Earth with an ultimatum to Dudley Baxter and the World State Council. The ultimatum is that the World State Council must voluntarily relinquish its present control over the Earth and submit to the dictates of the Triumvirate we shall establish here.
“A scientific leadership will be set up, with me at its head. Those who wish to leave Earth and come to Mars to live under our protection will be given safe passage; those who do not must take the consequences.”
“And the consequences mean a war of supreme scientific horror, eh?” Sykes demanded grimly.
Surprisingly, Brown shook his head. “No—not war. Just … alterations. Just something so unpleasant that even I do not like to think about it”.
“You boys like to play rough, don’t you?” Sykes snapped. He turned imploringly to Eva Wayne.
“Eva, they’ve got us off our guard, and we may as well realize it. Do as you are told; it’s the only way—for the present. As for me—I’ll deliver your ultimatum to Earth, Dr. Brown. And the answer will be—‘go to hell’!”
“That is entirely possible,” Brown purred sneeringly. “Only—it will be an inferno, I am afraid, of our own design!”
Mockingly, Dr. Brown bowed the two of them out of the door, himself bringing up the rear. Eva started when, angrily jamming her hands in her pockets, one of them came into contact with the small oblong box which Dr. Hendriks, dying, had brought into the room. Tight-lipped, the girl betrayed no inkling of the sudden question which tugged at her mind.
CHAPTER III
Death en masse
By advance radio Howard Sykes warned Dudley Baxter of his coming. The moment he arrived at the Earth spaceport, he was whisked by fast airplane to the city center and thence to the private chambers in the Administration Building where Baxter, chief consultant of the World State Federation and numerous officials were already gathered to meet him.
“Now, Mr. Sykes, what exactly is going on?” Baxter asked anxiously, when the formalities were over. “Most of what has happened we already know from telescopic observations.”
“I’ve been instructed to deliver an ultimatum,” Howard Sykes replied bitterly. “You are asked to put the whole Earth under the control of the Martian Scientific Triumvirate, who will decide what is to be done for the future. You are also asked, in your own interests, to move as much of the world’s population as possible to Mars, if you wish them to escape some sort of horrible disaster.”
“A war?” snapped President Johnston, elective head of the World State.
“Dr. Brown did not say so, sir. He hinted at an ‘alteration’. I’ve no idea what he meant—except that it would be terrible beyond comprehension.”
Baxter tapped the desk impatiently. “And do Dr. Brown and his two associates dare to think that they, scientists, can give such orders to the World Council? I never heard of anything so—so outrageous!”
President Johnston snorted angrily. “You say Dr. Brown demands unconditional surrender? Why, even Hitler used to make offers of negotiation during the Second World War!”
“You forget, Mr. President,” Dudley Baxter said acidly, “that Herr Hitler faced the best army and the best navy in the world! Just what have we got up our sleeve? Nothing—the whole world disarmed after the Second World War!”
“Well, what’s this terrible menace that Brown is about to unleash, then?” President Johnston demanded.
Howard Sykes shrugged angrily. “I wish I had even the faintest idea, sir. Brown and two of his otherwise perfectly sane colleagues have suddenly become cold, scheming madmen. I think the best policy to pursue for the time being—”
“Policy be damned!” Dudley Baxter snorted. “I’m refusing Brown’s ultimatum—absolutely! Let him make the first move. We’ll find a way out, somehow. We always have!”
Sykes sighed resignedly. “I told Dr. Brown that would be your answer. Well—I guess the only thing for me to do is to return to Mars and set myself up as a diplomatic observation post. Keep radio communications clear of all interference from now on. If anything breaks, I’ll do everything—murder not excepted!—to get through to you.”
The members of the World Council nodded their heads in agreement, and remained in Baxter’s office discussing ways and means to combat this terror which as yet had not even struck. Himself emotionally exhausted from the ordeal he had been through, Howard Sykes went to his own private apartment in the city and fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.
He awoke the next morning feeling satisfyingly relaxed. But five minutes later, when he opened his apartment door and reached for the morning paper, the funereal black headlines tied his stomach up in a knot.
“My God—Baxter must have radioed to Dr. Brown his refusal of the ultimatum!” Sykes groaned. “He couldn’t wait for me to announce it as diplomatically as possible!”
The headlines read:
WORLDWIDE SPACE SHIP BA
SES RAZED IN MYSTERIOUS BLASTS
Destruction Follows Baxter’s Refusal of Ultimatum from Mars
Violent explosions struck at space ship bases all over the world last night, in a fury of destruction which leveled to the ground not only spaceports and hangars but even manufacturing plants and rocket-fuel works.
The explosions began almost without exception within three hours after Dudley Baxter’s radio message to a so-called Martian Triumvirate, in which Baxter refused point blank to accede to any of the Triumvirate’s demands conveyed to the World Council earlier in the evening by Ambassador Howard Sykes.
According to carefully checked reports, the destruction was not the result of sabotage. Spaceport managers and manufacturing executives all said that company detective systems failed to reveal the presence of saboteurs.
This newspaper learned early this morning from an unimpeachable source that a committee of three formerly sane scientists seized control of the Martian colony established six months ago by World State Consultant Baxter. Its leader, Dr. Brown, dispatched Ambassador Howard Sykes to his home government, to deliver an ultimatum the terms of which would mean a complete loss of Earth independence. Further…
Howard Sykes flung the paper down savagely, scrambled into his overcoat and raced out of the building. In ten minutes he was with a worried Baxter in the private chambers of the Administration Building.
“Yes, yes, I know why you’ve come,” Baxter sighed. “They’ve blown up our only means of getting to Mars. They did it right after I told them I’d have nothing to do with their plan.
“I’ve had what few experts we’ve got working on this job, and it’s pretty clear the trick was pulled by etheric vibration. A vibration sent forth from Mars caused a straight-line ripple in the ether between Mars and Earth. When the ripple hit Earth in the predetermined spot, matter—as matter—simply telescoped into itself. Electron hit proton and the outcome was a violent explosion.
“We’ve dreamed of it for years. In fact, we’ve had it right in our hands, only we thought we’d never have to use it. They’ve done it on Mars, with unlimited science and power at their command.”
Sykes muttered something under his breath that would not bear repeating in print. A moment later, both men’s eyes widened as the signal-light on Baxter’s special desk-set radio receiver began to wink violently.
Baxter snapped the switch. “Dudley Baxter speaking. Who calls?”
The voice sounded infinitely far away—a woman’s voice.
“I must speak to Howard Sykes if he’s still there. I must! Hurry!”
“It’s Eva Wayne!” Sykes cried hoarsely, flinging himself before the apparatus. “It’s me, Eva!” He grabbed up the microphone. “Quick—speak!”
There was a long interval as the message hurtled millions of miles across space. Then Eva spoke again, her voice ethereal with vast distance.
“Listen carefully! I’m taking a big risk, speaking from a mobile radio set. I’ve found something. That slide Hendriks left—”
Sykes’ hand reached for a pad. He took the girl’s words down in shorthand.
“That slide contained a drop of blood from the young physicist. You remember? Well, the drop is teeming with bacilli. What is more, when they are isolated and studied, they prove to be anything but normal bacilli. My private biological experiments lead me to think that they are intelligent and highly organized! I’ve had some time in which to make my tests, remember.”
Eva paused a moment.
“My theory is that Mars was not entirely dead when we took it over! It is the accepted law of evolution that the last survivors on any planet will be a race of intelligent bacilli. They are the hardest things to destroy, and must ultimately outlive all humans and insects which will precede them in the scale of life.
“The evaporating air of Mars finally sent these bacilli into a kind of inanimate hibernation. When we brought warmth and air back again—they revived! They are intelligent enough, I believe, to reason and they saw a chance to restore their old heritage of science and domination.
“Upon recovery many of them passed into the bloodstream of the scientists seeming most likely to aid them—the physicists, the cosmic engineers, and the astronomers. The other sciences they destroyed as needless, especially the Biology Zone, since it might reveal their secret and upset their plans.
“These bacilli, as I see it, cannot produce hypnosis in the minds of their human carriers, but they can influence certain brain centers. What they have done is to speed up the knowledge of the physicists, astronomers, and engineers, and have also depressed certain brain centers by pressure, which has produced a stubborn refusal to cooperate.
“A tumor can produce the same effect, remember. Pressure of certain amounts of bacilli—harmless from the disease point of view—has had a similar influence to that of a tumor. On the one hand, unreasonableness; on the other, amazing genius.”
The signals stopped. Heart beating, Sykes said:
“Message received. What is implied by all this?”
After the customary pause the reply came back.
“Those bacilli inside the scientists will undoubtedly remain there to continue their hellish work. The others, spawning in the resurrected soil of Mars, will possibly seek Earth as their new habitat. That is the reason why their comrades inside the scientists have inspired Dr. Brown and the others to make demands on the Earthly government.
“An invasion of the world by intelligent Martian bacilli is not improbable—but that would presuppose conditions on Earth equal to those on Mars in its heyday: a lighter air and lesser gravity. The scientific engines controlled by Brown, his brain controlled in turn by the bacilli, may possibly find a means to produce such conditions on the Earth.
“But the biggest danger lies in the fact that once the bacilli land on Earth, they will be able to evolve naturally apart from a bloodstream, as they would have evolved had Mars not died. That means bacilli of giant size in a very short time, for their metabolism is amazingly fast.
“I cannot tell you more now. There is danger—”
The red pilot light expired. Baxter stood erect, his face astounded.
“This is the damnedest thing I ever heard of! Well, I’ll call an emergency session of the World Council this afternoon, to consult on ways and means of beating this invasion.”
There was a harsh brooding light in Howard Sykes’ eyes.
“You can kill armies of men,” he said slowly. “You can bomb cities, sabotage munitions plants, sink navies. But—you can’t fight billions and billions of germs which so far haven’t even been classified!”
CHAPTER IV
World Chaos
The World State Council met that afternoon and deliberated for five hours, as councils have a way of doing. Desperate expedients were discussed at white heat; whole campaigns for warfare outlined, set down on paper, and then torn up.
After all, what could the good council fathers do against the most minute and yet most deadly enemy of them all—a minuscule, microscopic jot of bacteria which in the aggregate comprised a guerrilla army of incomprehensible destruction?
Howard Sykes, however, obtained permission from World President Johnston himself for the construction of a personal space ship to carry him to Mars. For a week and more he was kept busy at a secret space machine factory. It was a week of intense activity in all parts of the world as the World Council marshalled its forces and issued orders for an impending struggle. Then at the end of the week the Triumvirate struck with all their diabolical power.
The first signs of disaster began in the curious calm which descended on every part of the world. From pole to pole a dense mass of cloud formed over the planet Earth. Airmen sent up to make observations reported a cloud density hundreds of miles thick, reaching right up into the stratosphere, while their instruments recorded the presence of vast amounts of potential electricity. Something had gone wrong with the atmosphere!
Down on Earth the remaining scientific experts worked
ceaselessly to explain away the heavy, charged pall that had descended on the world. It persisted for three days, blotting out the sun, giving a twilight glow to the daylight. Its effects made people jumpy and nervous; dogs barked incessantly. There was a curious, crushing calm in which not a tree moved. Not a breath of wind was on the land. The oceans of the world subsided to a dead calm.
On the third day the experts integrated their findings and presented their conclusions promptly to the World Council. Howard Sykes was present when they arrived in a body.
“The Triumvirate are building up a vast potential electrical field in the atmosphere,” World State Consultant Dudley Baxter said grimly, glancing up from the report. “This has been accomplished apparently by the training of cosmic forces upon our electrically constituted atmosphere—a natural condition. When a certain point is reached, there will be an atmospheric fusion—a thunderstorm on a titanic scale racing round and round the globe!
“When this storm has expended its fury, there will be a perceptible lessening of the air pressure. There will be a blasting of molecules, a weakening of the upper electrical layer which will keep our atmosphere at an even pressure.”
Baxter paused, added bitterly, “The intention, obviously, is to bring the atmosphere down to the level which a Martian bacilli can endure in comfort— but which will probably choke most of us to death!”
“And there’s nothing we can do to combat it!” Sykes muttered helplessly, pacing slowly up and down. He stopped at the big window and gazed out over the twilight mass of illumined New York. It was hard to believe it was only mid-afternoon. Overhead that pall loomed…
Abruptly, almost as though by evil prearrangement, the room suddenly crackled with a blaze of violet flame. Sykes felt his hair actually stand up under the force of sudden electric discharge. The whole group glanced up, startled, and at the identical moment there was a sound overhead like the tearing of linen, followed by the most appalling thunderclap.
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