The little voice of the announcer was official.
“The Prime Minister appeals to everyone to remain calm. He asks you to mistrust all wild rumours, and to avoid panic. All the possible causes of this unprecedented and terrible tragedy are being explored.”
Night.
Professor Pye had been sitting at his wireless set. It had an extensive range and he could listen in to London, Paris, Berlin, Milan. He picked up fragments of Continental agitation. Paris was commenting upon the incredible cataclysm in England. Had there been an escape of some strange subterranean gas through a crack in the earth’s crust? No seismic shock had been recorded. Milan was speculating as to cosmic dust. Or had the lethal atmosphere of some passing comet brushed across a portion of Great Britain? Eminent scientists were being asked to give their views upon a catastrophe that was of startling significance to the whole world.
Professor Pye went up to his tower. He looked out over Surrey. He heard the lowing of those abandoned and unmilked cows in the field below. He heard the sound of a car in the valley, and saw its headlights clearing the darkness. That ingenious and irrepressible insect man was buzzing back into the death zone. The car stopped in the valley. And then Professor Pye heard the drone of an aeroplane overhead.
His madness became cunning. He had left the lights in the laboratory, and he hurried downstairs and switched them off. If he showed a light—especially a stationary light—his enemies might infer that someone was alive. Life itself would inspire curiosity—suspicion. He had other brains pitted against his.
He returned to the tower. He had hurried up the staircase. He was agitated. That aeroplane was droning overhead, and its sound was angry and menacing. He would have to deal with aeroplanes. Just before dusk he had taken his bearings and left the atomic gun trained upon Brighton. Yes, he would try more current. It was a risk, but he would have to take that risk. He stood in the darkness behind the tube and released a larger volume of On-force.
The gun had stood the strain.
But just how far would its lethal effect carry? Supposing that the range was limited by the size of the apparatus? What then? Yes, he would have to experiment and discover how far this power extended. By listening in he would be able to define the dead zone from the living. If Paris remained vocal he would have discovered the limitations of his gun. What then? To maintain about him a zone of death, to repulse all penetration, until he had built a more powerful apparatus.
Ruthlessness, a kind of divine ruthlessness, was inevitable.
Meanwhile, these explorers, these angry human insects in cars and aeroplanes were beginning to buzz about him. They would have to be dealt with—and that instantly. He must make his desert so deadly that no human creature would dare to venture into it. It was necessary for him to have leisure, breathing space, security. He had food and water, electricity, oil.
Inexorably, but with a slight and significant tremor of the hands he slewed the gun this way and that. There had been voices, in the valley, but suddenly they were stilled, though the cars’ headlights continued to blaze. Crouching, he pointed the gun skywards towards the sound of the cruising plane. The drone did not cease, but it seemed to slip and to descend. There was a sound of a crash in the valley, and presently a knot of flame sprang up.
X
Terror upon terror, sensation after sensation.
The Prime Minister had not returned from Surrey. None of those who had hurried down to investigate had returned.
Heston Aerodrome, which had sent out two scouting planes, reported both machines as missing.
Moreover, doctors in the area surrounding that centre of darkness and of silence were being summoned to hundreds of people who had fainted and remained unconscious for short periods of time. The On-force, lethal over a definite field, weakened upon dispersal until it produced nothing more than syncopic attacks, giddiness, nausea.
A telephone operator, speaking to the Brighton exchange, was left stranded in sudden silence.
“Hallo—Brighton, hallo.”
Brighton did not reply.
Other people who were speaking to friends in Brighton experienced the shock of that same silence. Voices died away, and did not return.
Trains that had left Brighton after dark, or were in the Brighton area, failed to arrive.
Horsham, Cuckfield, Hassocks were equally silent. So were Peacehaven and Shoreham, Steyning and Lewes. Worthing and Eastbourne reported hundreds of cases of people fainting in the streets, on the sea front, in cinemas, hotels, houses.
The area over which the On-force was active had the shape of an elongated egg. It spread gradually from its point of origin, reached a certain extreme width, and then contracted. Earth contours, hills and valleys, appeared to have no obstructing effect upon the force. It penetrated wherever there was air. People were killed in tunnels, subways and cellars.
During that first night very few people slept. A venturesome aviator, flying in the early morning over Surrey and Sussex, returned safely to Croydon Aerodrome. He and his observer had the stark faces of men who had looked upon some horror.
“Brighton’s a vast morgue. Yes, we flew low along Brighton front. Thousands of people lying dead there.”
The Cabinet, sitting at No. 10, Downing Street, received the news of this latest cataclysm. Already they had called in scientific experts, among them Professors James and Beddington. Maps were spread. With such facts as they could command, these ministers and experts attempted to define the area of death and to arrive at some explanation of the mystery.
There was the problem of a public panic and the Press.
“Better stop all the morning papers.”
“Wouldn’t that be more likely to produce a panic? Press has been asked to refrain from publishing too much detail.”
Professor Beddington, bending over a map, was shading certain portions of it with a blue pencil. He had a police report beside him.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer bent over Beddington’s shoulder.
“Any theory, Beddington?”
Beddington was a dispassionate, large-headed man who had the appearance of a farmer.
“There seems to be a definite focus. Our information goes to show that the focus is on the North Downs between Guildford and Dorking.”
The Leader of the House, standing by a window and smoking a pipe, asked the question that was at the back of every mind:
“It might happen—to London?”
Professor Beddington looked up.
“Yes. Obviously—so.”
Somewhere in the room a voice sounded a note of fear.
“What—is—the damned thing? My God—we must find out!”
“Any views on the Martian theory, Beddington?”
The man at the table tapped his teeth with the end of the blue pencil.
“Not very likely. If Mars was bombarding us with some kind of cosmic ray—there would be more dispersion. I mean, I think the area covered would be larger. We have had no reports from the Continent, have we, of similar happenings?”
“No.”
The Leader of the House, his pipe in his right hand, came and stood at the table.
“Then the thing’s—human?”
“Inhumanly human. Satanic.”
“Well?”
Professor Beddington leaned back in his chair.
“Supposing some individual who was anti-social and not quite sane had discovered how to control and use such a thing as—shall we say—atomic energy.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Is that possible? Of course, Beddington, you are one of the few men——”
“It is what we have been working for—but beneficently so.”
“Then, the inference is that if some malignant genius had evolved something of the kind he could wipe out humanity?”
“Exactly.”
“Good God! how would one deal with him?”
Professor Beddington smiled.
“Ah—how?”
Professor James had been scribbling on a writing-pad. He raised his head suddenly and spoke.
“I have been jotting down names, Beddington, alphabetically. I have just come to Pye. Did you ever meet Pye?”
“Once.”
“Rather a poisonous little person, but infernally clever. I happen to know that Pye lives in Surrey. He had a grievance against—everybody and everything. He was supposed to be researching on his own. Now, supposing, for argument’s sake, a man like Pye——?”
Professor Beddington nodded his large head.
“That’s my feeling too, James. I think we have to deal with some infernally clever super-megalomaniac. One ought to try and put one’s hand on every physicist in the country.”
Said the Man with the Pipe, “Why not begin with this fellow—Pye? He can be located; he can be——”
Once again Professor Beddington smiled his quiet smile.
“Yes—but supposing Pye to be the man—Pye will be—unapproachable. We cannot raise Pye to the Teeth—by—just deciding to do so. Pye can elevate us all to Paradise—before——”
“Good God!” said the frightened voice—“we are like a lot of doomed rats in a ship.”
The Man with the Pipe relit it.
He said, “I never felt less like a rat.”
XI
Professor Pye had not slept. He had been listening to the aerial voices of the earth.
Soon after dawn he carried a chair to the top of the tower and sat down beside his infernal gun.
He was like a little grey spider in the midst of a web of silence.
Brighton—human Brighton—had ceased to be. He had picked up that news from French sources. He was able to infer that his On-force had not reached the coast of France.
He sat with a map on his knees. He looked haggard, and his eyelids were red. If London shivered on the edge of panic, Professor Pye was not very far from strange terror. His discovery was catastrophic, but in the clarity of that September dawn he confronted his limitations. Obviously, the range of his atomic gun was lethal up to perhaps a hundred miles, but beyond that point society was safe. The problem posed him. Either the gun as it was designed would have to be made mobile, or a larger and more powerful apparatus be constructed. If he mounted the gun on a car and lorry, he would need more current than a portable battery could supply. He might connect, of course, with local generating stations. But when he had dealt with England, Wales and Scotland, he would arrive at the sea. A fast motor-boat and a dash across the Channel! but he could infer that the air would be thick with patrolling aeroplanes waiting for “It” to emerge from England. He would have to clear the sky as he went.
He began to shrink inwardly from the vastness of his war upon society. It began to scare him. He went below and heated up some coffee, and into it he poured some of his old brandy. A little knot of warmth hardened in his stomach. He lit a cigar, and with a faint suggestion of swagger he walked up and down the laboratory. How silent the world was! Sounds that he would not have reacted to on a normal day now impressed themselves on him by their absence. No trains, no traffic on the road, no birds, no Hands, no dog. Even those few live cows had stampeded in a panic, crashed through hedges, and had ceased to be. He heard nothing but the ticking of the laboratory clock, and the sound of his own footfalls. When he stood still to listen he could hear his own breathing.
But what was that?
He was growing jumpy. He stiffened and bristled like a scared cat.
Yes, there was some sound, a vibration in the air. Aeroplanes—not one, but several! The distant roar of the engines and the hum of the propellers roused qualms in his stomach. Big drums beating, war-drums. He rushed up the stairs to the tower; he crouched. He saw five planes in formation flying from the north-east. Soon they would be over the tower.
He crawled to the gun, slewed it round and up, and covered those planes. He released the On-force. For a second or two the planes held on before their formation broke; they appeared to drift this way and that like errant leaves. They dived, spun—disappeared beyond the hill. He counted five faint crashes.
Professor Pye left the gun pointed skywards and rose to his feet. He had wiped out that R.A.F. squadron, but the appearance of that squadron over the North Downs gave him furiously to think. Did the world suspect? Had other brains than his spent sleepless hours over the elucidation of the problem, and were approaching the most probable solution? They were postulating the manifestations of some new form of energy controlled and applied by a human being who was hostile to his fellows. They were searching for the focus of the On-force and the man who controlled it. They were sending out planes to scout over Surrey.
A sudden frenzy took possession of Alfred Pye. They suspected him! They were trying to locate the new demi-god. These fools thought that they could destroy him and his discovery, a discovery that if wisely used could efface an idiot democracy and cleanse the earth of demagogues and claptrap. He had in his hands the power to create a new earth, to decide what should live and what should die. He was the new dictator, a super-eugenist who could purge the earth of the little people who preached the palsy of Socialism. Equality! Brains like so many peas in a pod! Preposterous nonsense! He would demonstrate to the mob that it had a master.
His ruthless sanity may have been inspired, for those who have vision look for an autocracy of science, a just and beneficent tyranny exercised by the enlightened few over the inferior many. Science will mount its Olympus and rule, holding perhaps the menace of lightning in its hands. But Professor Pye had no Olympian smile. He was both ruthlessly sane and malignantly mad. He was a megalomaniac in a hurry to impress a destructive ego upon a society that opposed him.
London?
Yes, London was the enemy. London must be destroyed, for its destruction would send such a shudder over the earth that civilization would fall on its knees and surrender.
He would hear aerial voices appealing for mercy.
“O Thou Unknown God and Master, have pity on us. Spare us and we will serve you.”
His face was the face of a man in a frenzy. He trained the atomic gun on London, and then suddenly he paused. He had a sardonic inspiration. He possessed a small portable wireless set which he used when the more powerful apparatus was not needed. He went below and carried the little cabinet up into the tower. He placed it beside the gun.
Was London speaking?
He switched on. London was speaking. He heard the little, refined and carefully standardized voice of the B.B.C. announcer. It was telling England that Mr. Percy Haldane—the Leader of the House—was about to broadcast on the crisis. Mr. Haldane wished to appeal to the country for calmness and courage. There must be no panic. The Government and its body of experts were convinced that they were on the brink of locating the origin of the catastrophe and also its originator.
Professor Pye moistened his thin lips. So, they thought, did they—that he would wait to be located? Fantastic fools! But he would hold his hand for a moment and listen in to that prince of platitudinarians, Mr. Percy Haldane. It was Mr. Percy Haldane’s Government that had presented Sir Philip Gasson with his knighthood. A tribute to science! Gasson a scientist? He was just an academic sneak-thief.
The announcer’s voice ceased. There was a short pause, and then the deliberate and slightly sententious and rolling voice of Mr. Haldane was heard.
“I am speaking to England. I am speaking to those who, in a crisis, have never failed to meet it, however acute and ominous that crisis has been. Within the last forty-eight hours this country has experienced a series of mysterious catastrophes, but may I once say that the mystery is on the point of being—resolved. We—the Cabinet and our body of experts—are confident—that there is—in this country a monstrous offender against—civilization and humanity. We believe and are sure—that we can deal—with this evil spirit in our midst. I have just left a conference in which several eminent scientists, Professors Beddington and James, and Sir Philip Gasson——”
Profess
or Pye’s head gave a jerk. A little malevolent smile shimmered over his face. So, Gasson was there, Gasson the slimy and debonair, Gasson of the black velvet coat and the cerise-coloured tie, Gasson who, when lecturing, posed as though all the women must think him Zeus. Professor Pye licked his lips. Mr. Haldane’s voice was still booming.
Click! Professor Pye switched on the current. The wireless cabinet produced four more words from Mr. Percy Haldane.
“We English are people——”
Silence! Not a murmur. The little wooden cabinet was mute, and Professor Pye’s face malignantly triumphant. Exit—London, exit Mr. Percy Haldane, and Philip Gasson, and Whitehall and Somerset House, and Lambeth Palace, Whitechapel, all that suppurating sore which fools called a great city. Eros, on his pedestal in Piccadilly Circus, would be posing above an exhibit of corpses. For a few seconds there must have been infinite mechanical chaos, buses and cars running amok, charging each other and crashing through shop-fronts. The trains in the tubes had continued to circulate like toy trains until a confusion of collisions had jammed the tunnels.
Professor Pye’s cold frenzy continued. He swept the whole horizon with his gun. He would efface everything within the limit of its range, and then wait for the earth to surrender.
He would listen in to Europe’s terror and anguish.
Soon, they would be appealing to the Unknown God for mercy.
America, Asia, Africa, Australia, all would be on their knees to him in their transmission stations.
The world would surrender to him by wireless.
XII
Over the whole South-East of England, a large portion of East Anglia, the Midlands and the West there was silence. The death zone covered Bournemouth, Bristol, Gloucester, Birmingham, Leicester, Peterborough, Ipswich, Dover. Exeter, Cardiff, Derby, Nottingham and Norwich were alive. Calais and a small segment of the French coast had been affected. Just beyond the zone, life had been shocked but not effaced. There had been the same symptoms of nausea, giddiness, and in some cases temporary unconsciousness.
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