“Well, here I am—all of me!” Blake took off his hat and held out his hand genially as the girl went forward.
“Catch your subway train all right?” he asked naively.
“This is business, Mr. Blake,” she returned curtly. “Meet my father, Dr. Shaw.”
“Oh, yes—the scientist. Glad to know you, sir.”
Shaw shook hands rather indifferently. It was plain he was still suspicious of reporters, and this massive specimen in particular.
“According to my daughter Ann, Mr. Blake, you will be interested in the positive certainty of world destruction, will you not?” he asked briefly.
“World destruction!” Blake’s eyes opened wide, and he gulped a little. “Interested? I’ll say! Why, what’s coming up? More earth temblors, or something?”
“Not a temblor, young man—a quake. The quake! Now, here are the main facts—”
“Wait a minute!” Ann broke in suddenly, her voice hard and tense. “Listen! What’s that?”
The three of them stood motionless, aware of a deep rumbling roar from somewhere apparently far beneath their feet. The laboratory began to quiver with gradually increasing force. Glass instruments began to tinkle against their stands.
“Sounds like a subsidence of sorts,” Blake breathed finally.
“It’s the Quake!” Shaw snapped back, tight lipped.
Then Ann leaped to the window. Sheer amazement held her speechless fir aa moment, but she was aware of Blake and her father looking over her shoulders.
New York was falling! Shattering from top to bottom in a myriad blinding flashes of light as electricity became rampant and ripped along crumbling steel girders. Masonry, bricks, lights, flames—everything was a tumbling agglomeration to the accompaniment of a thundering growl like the onrush of an express train.
Within seconds the roar caught up with the laboratory. The floor heaved and pitched wildly. Instruments fell over. The light went out. Ann screamed hysterically as she felt herself flying into ebon darkness. She collided with something that sent a blinding pain through her arm and neck—
CHAPTER II
Reconstruction
Ann drifted slowly back to consciousness with the awareness of an excruciatingly hurtful arm and shoulder. She felt hot, feverish. Slowly she opened her eyes, realized that it was still night—but a night such as she had never expected to behold. The lowering, drifting clouds were painted with the flickering red of a million fires. The smell of burning drifted acridly to her nostrils; the heavy, strangely mournful silence was pierced in the far distance by a medley of hoots, siren screeches, desperate human cries and dull concussions.
She tried to move, could not for the agony of her arm. She moistened her dry lips and called weakly.
Immediately the tattered, blood-streaked figure of Rad Blake appeared beside her. She saw his strong face set into grim, hard lines. He was no longer the smiling and impudent reporter.
“Fa—father…” Ann faltered, staring up at him. “Where is he? And mother?”
He knelt down beside her, looked into her face with serious eyes.
“You may as well have the truth now as later, Ann,” he said quietly. “The laboratory came down in ruins. Somehow I got you out, but you’ve got a broken collar bone and arm—No, no, don’t try to move. I was waiting for you to recover consciousness before taking you to the city. Your father and mother and the servants—Well, they’re…”
“Dead?” the girl whispered, and her eyes misted with a hot flood of tears.
“There are the ruins,” he said moodily, nodding to a great pile of crumbled masonry. “All that’s left of the lab and house— It’s the end of the world. Ann—the end of everything man ever built up. We’ve got to face that as best we can.”
She did not speak, only burst suddenly into tears. A million thoughts were slamming through her tired, pain ridden brain. Catastrophe, colossal beyond all imagination had swept the earth. Her parents gone, her home shattered, civilization at an end. And the future?
She felt herself being lifted suddenly into Rad’s great arms. He held her tenderly, firmly, taking infinite care of her injured shoulder.
“Looks like you’re going to keep that date with me after all,” he said, grinning faintly through his sweat and dirt. “Take it easy, Ann; just rely on me. I’m tough enough to carry a dozen of your weight. I’m taking you to the city—or what’s left of it, anyway.”
Then he started to walk, steadily, his big blond head outlined against the crimson sky. Ann lay passive, biting her lip so that no utterance of pain should escape her. And little by little they began to near the smoking, flaming inferno that had been the pride of the Americas.
* * * *
Only an observer on another planet could possibly have gauged the extent of the disaster that had hit Earth in the space of a few short minutes.
The plasmic upper surface, drawn to breaking point by the invisible neutronium fragment computed by the dead Royston Shaw had at last ruptured. In that horrible moment the whole surface of the earth was tugged round like a loose skin on a bladder. Cities dropped instantly all over the world. Mountains rolled down to the plains, new ones reared up amidst colossal thunders. Volcanoes roared their hellish augmentation to the horror.
Tidal waves, drawn by the gravity of the invader at its closest approach, and spilled too by the vast surface changes, roared in solid hundred foot walls over shattered continents. It was the most frightful onslaught the world had ever known. Within the space of perhaps an hour the population of the world was reduced to a third.
In the western hemisphere at least a cold gray dawn revealed a scene of incredible havoc. No war, no diabolical contrivance of man, could have been so all encompassing. Hardly a building was left standing in New York City. Ruins everywhere—crumbled, heart breaking ruins—with the survivors staggering about half demented in their midst.
But such an adaptable animal is Man there began to grow a certain order out of chaos. What had happened in other parts of the world it was then impossible to say: to Ann and Rad the world was New York. Through ways and means they could not afterwards quite recall they found themselves domiciled by troops in one of the few big buildings still standing. There, as best they could, they tried to exist, at least while Ann had medical attention.
Through the ensuing weeks she began to mend steadily. In fact she mended far more quickly once she realized that sorrow for her dead parents was a useless quantity. With a brave smile on her lips she turned to face the new, grim future that had been thrust upon her.
It was during the period of respite that she and Rad, along with everybody else, became the observers of a sudden cycle of terrific electrical storms. They came without rhyme or reason—hours of blinding lightning and stunning thunder. Then they would vanish with curious suddenness to reveal the blue sky. Nobody seemed to have the least idea what it was all about; even Ann with her scientific knowledge was at a loss, unless the storms were the outcome of the Quake.
When they finally ceased and the normal winter returned they were entirely forgotten. Ann and Rad moved on from their confined quarters in the big building and finally took over a solitary wreck of a house to the south of the city. It had no pretensions to comfort. It was mainly one old drawing room, the windows blocked up with boards, the door a little hole at the bottom of the wall. But it was a home—of sorts. And they had candles from the city, and a good supply of smashed beams to make a fire. Yes, it was passable.
“Funny thing, Ann,” Rad had said one day, as they sat eating the tinned food he had frisked with some difficulty from the city, “you and I are stuck here just as though we’re married…I’ve often wondered if you mind?”
The girl smiled a little, drew her tattered clothing more tightly round her against the cutting winter drafts.
“Circumstances alter cases, Rad. You’ve been wonderfully good to me and I appreciate it. I’m sorry now for the way I treated you when we first met.”
“Aw, forget i
t. I was fresh, anyway…”
She ate in silence for a while, thinking. Then, “What are the folks doing in the city? Anything?”
“Building,” he muttered. “That was bound to come. But there is something else with it that I don’t like. Out of a disaster like this there emerges a distinct tendency to go totalitarian, like so many of the European states before the Quake. It’s only natural. We’ve got to have a leader, and in their present state of mind the people are listening to Saxby West. And can he hand them words!”
“Saxby West!” Ann echoed. “The former big labor boss?”
“The same—and he’s still a labor boss, with more power than ever. Remember how he used to spout about the crumbling foundations of democracy? Well right now he’s having a field day, and unless somebody opposes him he’ll wind up as a dictator of the country …and his rule won’t be exactly—pleasant.”
Ann meditated. As she well knew a man like Saxby West would inevitably become a tyrant if he gained control over the struggling country. That control he might easily achieve through the influence of his name alone. It had stood pre-eminently for labor and totalitarianism before the Quake. Right now, with the masses in his skilful hands…
“Suppose,” Ann said absently, “you oppose him?”
“Me!” Rad stared blankly. “Damn it all, Ann, what chance would I stand against—”
“Plenty of chances!” Her gray eyes became suddenly keen as she looked across the rough table. “You’re a hundred per cent American, you have a commanding appearance, especially with that long blond hair and yellow beard. You’ve got the physical power to assert yourself; you can talk by the ream.”
“In fact, I’m a mighty nice feller,” he grinned.
“I’m not trying to flatter you, Rad, I’m just stating facts—checking up on your assets, if you prefer it. Another thing, you know what caused the Quake; I’ve already told you the story dad had no time to give. That will give you a starting point with the people…You can also reassure them that the horror will never come again, that the invader, the neutronium, has gone on its way forever—as long as our lifetimes are concerned anyway. Last of all, you’re a democrat, and as such you’re closer to the heart of most Americans than Saxby West is.”
“Say, maybe you’ve got something there, Ann.” For a long time Rad sat pondering, tugging his square yellow beard. Then he looked up anxiously. “I suppose that neutronium chunk has gone forever? I’d be in a frightful spot if it came back after all my assurances.”
“But of course it’s gone! Dad said it would pass right out of our system. If it ever does come back it will be so far in the future we don’t need to worry over it.”
“Then—maybe—I could do something,” Rad mused. “Trouble is, I would need the dickens of a knowledge to take over a crumbled world.”
“Not a bit of it. You have plenty of ordinary knowledge—must have from your writing experiences. If you became dictator men in specialized fields would rally round you. And if it’s science you need sometimes you always have me. I know a thing or two about it, remember. Rad, I’m sure you could do it—if you wanted.”
He reached out across the table, clasped her slim fingers in his big hand. “That’s all I need,” he whispered. “If you believe in it to that extent it can be done. They’ll make Radford Blake their leader, and like it!”
For a long time afterwards they sat making plans, forming new ideas. Somehow, the future no longer seemed so black.
* * * *
Rad Blake’s campaign gave both him and Ann something to live for in the slowly re-growing city of New York. Day by day, throughout that bitter winter, the girl accompanied him on his tours of the ruins, sat by him as he stood and talked to the people in the shelter of crumbled edifices and held forth on the advantages of democracy and the law of freedom for every individual.
And little by little he made headway. People began to take notice of the blond giant with the flowing beard, and of the quiet girl who rarely made a comment. He was obviously sincere—even to the point of using his sledgehammer fists where necessary. Besides, had he not formed numberless men and women’s clubs, organized new relief systems, put down a great deal of the looting and rape and murder that had followed the Quake? Was he not, in truth, a great warrior and pioneer breathing the spirit of the Americas? And did he not believe that every man, woman or child should have the right to pass an opinion?
Definitely! And Saxby West found his own campaign boomeranging upon him. His dictator ideals were not nearly so attractive as Rad Blake’s democratic promises. West’s fond dream of a totalitarian country and easy riches began to fade gradually. Despairing, he did away with fair methods and tried all underhand methods to be rid of Blake. But he failed: Blake watched and defeated every move.
By the early Spring of 1991, when New York was forming into a recognizable city again and other cities on the continent were starting to sprout from dead ashes, it became obvious that Radford Blake was going to be the undisputed master of America.
By the month of May he had achieved his ambition—gone far along the road from the draughty hovel where he and Ann had first debated the idea. In the intervening time his powers of speech had bound together the vast majority of people in a common loyalty; he had instituted laws for the country that were generally acceptable, had done away with all suggestions of a Congress. Certainly he was a dictator—but a democratic one, and therein lay the difference. He was the first in history. But history—and geography—had to be written anyway.
June, 1991, found him officially elected Dictator by an overwhelming majority over Saxby West. West took the defeat with a bitter smile on his lean, cruel face. Rad knew, deep down, that if the slightest chance ever arose he would be smashed from power with ruthless savagery. West still had a following; by a rigid campaign of mind poisoning he might finally swing the balance over in his favor. But that was in the future.
The occupation of a master building in the heart of New York, with Ann, now his wife, by his side, was by no means the end of the road for Rad Blake. Now he had gained the position he had to consolidate it, bend his own and the girl’s knowledge entirely to the task of reconstructing the totally shattered scale of balances that had existed before the Quake—a scale that had been badly in need of leveling anyway.
He had the advantage of clever men and women with initiative as his immediate circle of advisers. They helped with the real eagerness of men and women anxious to see their country dominate the world again. They toiled and labored on the schemes of Blake and Ann, saw New York in the space of another year grow to something of its old giantism. Other cities were grown up again too. Roads networked the continent once more; radio stations were back; sanitation, power, railway, and air were once more commercialized. The contact with distant rebuilt parts of the earth began again.
Blake, still bearded, the massive and genial master of it all, had reason to be proud of his efforts, and of the slim, capable girl by his side—
Then came the shadow—out of a clear sky of progress.
CHAPTER III
The Ice Will Come!
It started with the curious coldness of the Spring of 1993, a coldness that dragged on until early June, with the consequence that the crops so necessary as staple foods for the needs of a newly organized mankind were far below par. Already America and other countries were beginning to feel the shortage. Nor was the summer, when it did finally come, particularly helpful. There were night frosts to add further ruination.
The reason was obvious enough. Blake and Ann had the astronomers on the job immediately and within a week they sent in their spectro-heliograph plates and bolometer readings, together with masses of notes. Sunspots were at the back of the trouble—a rather abnormal number of them, just at the close of their usual 11-year cycle. Nothing to worry about, except that their unusual prevalence was blanketing the sun’s radiation and creating abnormally cold weather.
Blake and Ann were both satisfied with the explan
ation for the time being—but the fall of 1993 brought not a cessation of the spots but an increase. Throughout America and the world there went a grumble of alarm. This was not according to astronomical law…Food was short. The land was getting frozen long before its time and a long deadly winter loomed ahead. What was to be done about it?
Saxby West was not slow to see the opportunity either. His agents went to work, stressed the fact that, as a scientist, Dictator Blake should have foreseen this cosmic trouble and made due preparation for it. Not much of an argument perhaps, but West was clever. He knew human psychology. The peoples of America, paying fantastic prices for their foodstuffs and heating materials were just in the mood to listen to the first honeyed breath of totalitarian promises.
Facing another set of plates and readings, wading through the mass of information supplied by the astronomers, Blake began to see he was facing something he had never bargained for.
“It’s—it’s so ridiculous!” he expostulated to Ann, as she stood at the great office window staring down over night-bound New York. “Why should the sun suddenly decide to have an extra supply of spots at this very time? And spots that continually grow larger?”
At that she turned. Her face was set and serious as though an inner thought was disturbing her. He quiet gray eyes looked at the plates, at the unpleasant vision of the sun’s photosphere blotched with cancerous dark markings, some of them even reaching to the solar poles.
“Rad,” she said slowly, “I believe we’re up against it in real earnest this time. Not only us—but all the world! It’s the aftermath of that neutronium chunk. I’ve been thinking things over, and the points hang together so well it frightens me. Frightens me to think what is going to happen.”
“I don’t get you,” Rad said shortly, glancing up at her.
“I believe,” she answered pensively, “that that neutronium chunk did not continue into space as dad had expected: it fell into the sun! That would be when those electrical storms struck us. Remember? We couldn’t figure out the reason for them. After all, it is quite logical to assume that that chunk would fall in the sun. It was not moving fast enough to achieve an orbit round the primary, so it was drawn into it instead. It would automatically fall to the center. Since also it had not at any time the individual power to shift a planet, its gravity field added to that of the sun’s would not make any planet alter its position in space. The sun’s pull would be increased, yes—but not sufficiently to make any visible difference.”
John Russell Fearn Omnibus Page 65