The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK

by Chester S. Geier

  “Grace…” Downing turned to her as though he were a drowning man and she a straw.

  Grace refused to look at him. “Harris is now my husband,” she said coldly. “His interests are my interests. I agree perfectly with what he says.”

  Downing was stunned. The blood roared in his ears, and the room seemed to rock crazily. He felt cold and hollow and aching.

  Ogden crooked an arm to glance at his wristwatch. “Grace and I have plans for the evening. Our anniversary, you know. Take my advice, Ross, and go back to wherever you came from. The police are still looking for you, and if you persist in molesting me, I won’t hesitate to turn you in.” He reached suddenly into the breast pocket of his expensively tailored suit and extracted a wallet. “If you need some money, I’ll be glad—”

  Ogden broke off abruptly and backed away. “Ross! Don’t you dare touch me!”

  Downing continued to glare in cold fury. “I wouldn’t dirty my hands. And that goes for both of you!” He turned and stalked from the room.

  * * * *

  Back in his roadster, Downing drove aimlessly, no thought of a particular destination in mind. He coughed several times, unaware at first of doing so. Then, as his coughs increased, he grew alarmed. He realized he’d been driving for some time now in the bitter cold, and he had no overcoat. His throat felt raw and his nose was stuffed. He decided that his stay in Jorelle had somehow increased his receptivity to colds.

  Jorelle! Downing seized at the thought eagerly. Jorelle, the world that was nowhere—the nowhere that was his last bid for happiness. He thought with sudden poignancy of Lethra and Churran. In memory he saw Lethra’s strange tawny eyes and the deep red hair that hung in glowing splendor about her shoulders. Yearning to be back in Jorelle ached abruptly within him.

  “Hey, buddy, pull over to the curb!”

  The rough voice shook Downing from his brooding. He turned his head to see a police car gliding alongside his roadster.

  Panic swept him like an icy wind. The police!

  Ogden and Grace had warned him that he was still being sought. Had they, fearing for their security, put the police on his trail?

  Downing saw the results of capture with harsh clarity. He’d have no chance to prove his innocence. The passing of two years had destroyed every hope of doing so. He’d be convicted, shut up in a hard gray cell. The fever would come back. He’d have attacks of it over and over. The fever and the long years in prison would kill him slowly and inexorably.

  He couldn’t allow himself to be captured. He had to reach Jorelle—or die!

  Downing roused into flashing activity. Jamming his foot down upon the accelerator, he turned the wheel of the roadster hard over, cut directly in front of the police car. The driver automatically braked to prevent a collision. Downing roared across the opposite traffic lane just as the lights changed. A stream of vehicles flowed into motion, blocking off the police car effectively.

  Downing piled distance behind himself. Finally he pulled up into the dark mouth of an alley to rest and plan. His heart seemed to be beating in his throat, and breath was something he had to fight for. His coughing had increased in force and frequency. Chilling spasms wracked him, followed by intervals of clammy warmth. His fever was coming back. He sensed it with the conviction of long familiarity.

  But this time he welcomed its coming. The fever was his passport to Jorelle.

  Several times while Downing huddled in the car, alternately shivering and sweating, police cars prowled past his refuge. The alarm had been sent out. They were hunting for him relentlessly.

  Downing waited, while his head grew heavy and aching and the fever kindled and finally flamed within him as of old. Night deepened. There was another flurry of falling snow. A thin biting wind lifted the snow and sent it whirling and twisting in white clouds along the street.

  As Downing sat thinking, it suddenly occurred to him that the police might not be seeking him in connection with the theft at all. It could very likely have been his outdated license plates that had drawn their attention to him. But the damage had been done. By his very act of fleeing, he had labeled himself a suspicious character, someone to be sought and questioned. If he were taken into custody, his identity would be discovered, and his arrest for the theft would follow as a matter of course.

  At last Downing decided it was safe to venture from his hiding place. Enough time had elapsed for the police to lose their first flush of enthusiasm for the chase.

  Downing tooled the car from the alley, and keeping to dark, less-frequented streets, began to wend his way out of the city. The houses were beginning to thin when abruptly the wail of a police siren rose behind Downing. He twisted around in his seat, darted a glance behind him. A police car was coming after him—and fast!

  Downing ground the accelerator into the floorboards. The roadster leaped ahead like a spurred horse.

  Downing hunched over the wheel, fighting for clarity of vision through the fog which was beginning to veil his eyes. The wail of the siren in his rear rose in volume.

  Downing jerked the roadster up one street, down another, over and over, in desperate attempts to throw the police car off his trail. Because of the fact that he took almost incredible risks in doing so, he succeeded momentarily. The wail of the siren still followed him, but the glare of pursuing headlights was gone. Downing headed for the road and open country—and Jorelle.

  Downing had shaken the police car in a sparsely settled subdivision. Streets were fewer, and the police quickly regained his trail. Downing had made a gain in distance, but his pursuers quickly closed the gap.

  It was all straight driving now. Downing had a lead, and he intended to keep it. He had the accelerator rammed down as far as it would go. He found it increasingly hard to see. A darkening mist swam before his eyes, and each attempt to remove it took more effort than the last. Every jolt and sway of the roadster brought pain that threatened to split his head. And then the road began to twist and curl like a great, gray worm.

  Suddenly downing became aware that the shrill voice of the siren behind him had grown louder. Was the police car gaining on him? Glancing back, he saw a single headlight bobbing in his wake, growing larger. A highway patrolman had joined the chase!

  Despair clutched at Downing sickeningly. On the motorcycle the patrolman would soon catch up. If Downing did not stop, shots from the patrolman’s revolver would blast his tires into shreds, send the roadster hurtling to destruction.

  Downing gripped the wheel with sweating hands. His heart was a trip hammer in his chest. The motorcycle behind him was gaining—gaining. Its siren was a shriek of doom in his ears. Abruptly, almost lost in the roar of engines and the wailing of sirens, Downing heard a dull, flat report. A shot! The patrolman, certain now that Downing would not stop, had opened fire.

  In a moment of lucidity, Downing glimpsed a milepost up the road. Something about it and the surrounding countryside seemed familiar to him. And then, abruptly, he had the sensation of falling, falling. There was a twisting and wrenching—and then, the night was gone, and the cold was gone, and the sky was a vivid emerald green, and the sun, still rising, was a huge red-gold orb.

  Jorelle!

  The knowledge rang within Downing like a carillon. He did not slacken the furious speed of the roadster. He kept right on going, straight to the angular white house almost lost in vegetation far down the road. Two figures ran out to meet him as he drew up to a stop.

  “Ross! Ross!” It was Lethra, joyful and amazed. “You’ve come back?”

  Downing touched her cheek, smiling into her tawny eyes, his fever, everything, forgotten. “I’ve come back, little Lethra. Back to stay.”

  HAUNTED METROPOLIS

  Originally published in Amazing Stories, November 1946.

  Waring leaned abruptly forward at his desk. “What are you talking about, Prentis?” he demanded. “Are you trying to t
ell me that City One is haunted?”

  Buck Prentis inclined his shock of red hair slowly. He twisted nervously at the brim of his uniformed cap, glancing about the office with apprehensive eyes. The afternoon light of Sirius which poured in through the windows gave a fantastic quality to his behavior. One just didn’t expect a rocket pilot—and a red-headed one at that—to show nerves in broad daylight.

  Waring eased back into his chair. “You must be developing a case of flight jitters, Prentis. After all, this is the 27th Century. Superstition died out long ago.”

  Prentis’ face set stubbornly. “Maybe so. But this is an alien world. Who can be sure that there aren’t…things in the deserted cities here on Faltronia that—well, didn’t stay dead? I tell you, sir, if you had seen those strange lights—”

  “You mentioned the lights,” Waring said. “Are you the only one who has seen them?”

  “I’m not the only one, sir. Other night-flight pilots have reported them.”

  “They have, eh?” Waring became thoughtful. He reached out to finger abstractedly the metal nameplate which stood on his desk. Block letters bore the legend: “Lon Waring. Chief of Police, City One.” Aware suddenly of what he was doing, he pulled his hand away. Lines of bitterness momentarily appeared in his face. He returned his gaze to Prentis, asked:

  “Can you describe the lights?”

  “I sure can. Some of them are like little balls of fire floating through the streets. Sort of white in color. Then there are others that come and go real fast—like tiny flashes of green and yellow lightning. And a few buildings were lighted, as if someone—or something—were inside them.”

  “How long has this been going on, Prentis?”

  “A little over a week, sir.”

  “You and the others saw no lights previous to that time?”

  Prentis shook his head.

  “Where do the lights appear?” Waring asked with growing interest. “That is, in all the uninhabited sections of the city, or just in certain parts?”

  “Just in East Section, sir. All the way down at the far end, near the lake.”

  “I see.” Waring meditatively rubbed the back of a hand across his jaw. “Well, thanks for this information, Prentis. I’ll see that an investigation is made. Might be that a gang of pirates have chosen East Section for a hideout.”

  “Maybe it isn’t pirates, sir,” Prentis blurted. “Maybe it’s something that isn’t—human.”

  “Ghosts?” Waring suggested with a faint grin.

  “That would be a good guess.” Prentis raised an arm in a jerky salute, turned, and left the office.

  For some seconds Waring sat quietly, gray eyes squinting with thought. Finally he rose from the chair and limped to the televideo set built into the wall behind his desk. He punched out a call number on the activator studs. Lights whirled kaleidoscopically in the viewscreen, coalesced into an image. Waring gazed at the round, ruddy features of Tom Stevens, president of Inter-Faltronia Rocket Lines.

  “Hello there, Lon,” Stevens greeted with characteristic joviality. “Anything I can do?”

  “Sort of,” Waring replied. “Look, Tom, one of your pilots, Buck Prentis, dropped in to see me with a rather screwy yarn. Seems that he and other night-flight pilots have been seeing strange lights in East Section. Know anything about this?”

  Stevens nodded with sudden solemnity. “My boys seem pretty worked up about those lights. They claim that the city is—ah—haunted.”

  “Think it could be just a hoax?” Waring asked.

  “I don’t think so. I know my boys pretty well—and they’re serious about this matter, Lon. Dead serious.”

  “What are your opinions?”

  Stevens hesitated. His plump features registered an expression of discomfort. “Well…those lights are queer. It seems doubtful that they could be due to human agency, because you know how people shun the deserted section of the city at night.”

  “Your pilots seem to have infected you with their supernatural fears,” Waring commented. “Why don’t you admit that ghosts are responsible for the lights and be done with it?”

  Stevens flushed. “That may not be as far-fetched as it appears. Lon, I tell you I’ve been doing some serious thinking about this matter. Look here—the original inhabitants of this city were alien. Get that? Alien. Can you say for sure that death is the same for all races of people?”

  Waring shrugged. “That’s open to metaphysical debate. But remember, this mysterious light business started just a little, over a week ago. If the shades of the Aliens are haunting East Section, they’ve waited a mighty long time to do it. No—I’m sure we’ll find something entirely natural and logical to account for the lights.”

  “I hope so,” Stevens muttered. Waring broke contact. His gray eyes darkening with thought, he limped slowly over to the windows. He gazed at the weird outlines of City One, limned against the blue-green sky of Faltronia.

  Somehow, even with the light of Sirius warm upon him, it didn’t seem so incredible that men of the 27th Century could believe in the possibility of a city being haunted by the spirits of an alien race. Civilization, he knew, was a veneer which on most people was easily scratched. And moreover life in City One was sufficient to render susceptible to superstitious fears and beliefs even the most thick-skinned.

  City One seemed to exude an almost tangible atmosphere of the strange and grotesque. The architecture was bizarre, unearthly, bewildering in its amount of ornamental detail. The buildings were predominantly squat and massive, occasionally domed, but most often crowned by soaring towers and spires with an effect suggestive of the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages of Terra. But now they were dark and silent, brooding, their countless windows like dead, staring eyes. An air of desertion and neglect hung over the city. Only the wind moved in the utter stillness, whispering like voices from beyond.

  * * * *

  The first interstellar explorers, crossing extraplanetary space by means of the Hyperspace Drive, had reached the four planets of the Sirian System a little over thirty years before. On the second planet, which they had called Faltronia because of its vast deposits of the mineral of the same name, they had found six cities—each silent and deserted. Not a trace remained of their former inhabitants, nor had any indication been found of what had happened to them. They had simply vanished from the surface of Faltronia, leaving the great cities behind.

  With commercialization of the Hyperspace Drive had begun the migration of colonists to the habitable planets of the nearer stars. Faltronia, because of its great cities and vital resources, had at first been a popular settling place. The machinery, tools, and furniture found in the cities were easily put into use, for the Aliens had been humanoid, not greatly different in bodily structure than men. Paintings and sculptures showed them to have been some seven feet in height, slender, with large domed heads and long, prehensile fingers and toes.

  But despite the fact that it contained wealth in many forms, the majority of colonists had not remained on Faltronia. The brooding silence and unearthliness of the deserted cities had grown upon them to the extent where leaving was the only relief. Now the six cities totaled little more than ten thousand people each, tiny islands of humanity in the vast sea of buildings all about them.

  Looking now at the awesome vista of buildings before him, Waring felt a touch of sadness. Faltronia, he realized, had potentialities for becoming a center of culture second only to Terra itself. Everything needed for a mighty planetary state was there, but the glories which should have been showed no evidence of materializing. Faltronia was like a gigantic torch which the flame of Terran civilization had touched, but which it had failed as yet to ignite. Waring wondered if the torch would ever be ignited.

  Abruptly he shrugged. What did he care? He reminded himself that he hated Faltronia. He reminded himself, too, that he loathed his petty desk job as Chief of Poli
ce of City One.

  Waring heard the door of his office open behind him. He turned as a girl strode into the room. With something that was deeper and more poignant than mere apprehension, his eyes probed into hers. The bitter lines deepened in his face as he saw just what he had feared he would see. There was pity in those blue eyes lifted to his. Pity for him.

  Waring turned away. Resentment ate like an acid inside him.

  “It’s past quitting time, Lon,” Sally Rhodes said. Her voice was gentle, oddly patient.

  Waring did not turn. “I’m staying awhile,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got a little work to do.”

  Sally Rhodes looked down at her hands. Her small mouth twisted. After a moment she looked up. Pain had replaced the pity in her blue eyes.

  “You’re avoiding me, aren’t you, Lon?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Waring whirled, the words of explanation leaping hotly to his lips. The next instant he checked himself. His broad shoulders slumped with futility. What good would it do? How could he tell her he couldn’t bear the pity which shone always in her gaze when she looked at him? How could he tell her he was too proud to accept her sympathy? Explanations would change nothing. She might try to mask her pity, but he knew it would still be there. “Nothing is wrong,” he said.

  Sally straightened with purpose. “Then look, Lon, I’ve been on Faltronia a whole month now, and I’ve seen nothing as yet of City One.” Her voice quickened. “I’d particularly like to see East Section. I’ve heard the buildings there are beautiful. Lon—wouldn’t you care to take me there? It’s still two hours before dark, and we wouldn’t have to go very far.”

  Waring shook his head wearily. “I’ve just received some strange reports on East Section. Until these are investigated, I think it would be best to keep away from that part of the city.”

  “Evasions!” Sally blazed abruptly. “That’s all I’ve had from you since I arrived. Lon, I came here to serve as your secretary, because I thought I could help you—make things a little easier. But you’ve made it very difficult for me—and I’ve had enough.”