Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  With an odd clarity, Dunn remembered a Bible quotation from the man’s first broadcast: “Is not my word as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?”

  It had been a clever association of ideas—incredibly clever. Few utterances in history had caught more powerfully at human imagination, human beliefs. People were tired of war, tired of the destruction, the brutality and fear that went with it. They had been seeking some hope, some reassurance . . . some Sign. In the Celestial Hammer it had finally appeared. And Everett Stonecrest had emerged as an oracle, a prophet.

  Dunn straightened with sudden impatience and glanced at his watch. The shadow of Everett Stonecrest’s much-publicized yet little-known figure touched only remotely at the fringes of his own life. All that mattered to him was a soft voice that had been inexplicably silent.

  HE TURNED back to the radio set and reached for the microphone. He’d make one last attempt to reach her this way. After that he’d have to try a more direct approach.

  “WF18W calling WC33M . . . WF18W calling WC33M . . . WF18W calling WC33M.”

  He lighted a cigarette and waited. The slow minutes passed, mockingly soundless.

  No answer.

  He sighed finally and crushed out the remains of the cigarette. He rose slowly to his feet. He stood looking down at the radio set for a brooding moment, then reached out to switch it off.

  “Hello, WF18W! This is WC33M. Am I coming through?”

  The familiar soft voice—but somehow changed. There was an unusual haste in it, a frantic urgency.

  “Faye!” he said. He dropped back into the chair, groped for the microphone. “Faye!” he said again. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all week.”

  “I know, Brad,” she returned swiftly. “I wasn’t able to answer. Now please listen carefully. I have very little time, and what I’m going to say is important. . . Brad, I have reason to believe that you’re in real danger. It’s because of your calls to me on the radio. Watch yourself, Brad. Don’t trust strangers who approach you for any reason.”

  The complete unexpectedness of the warning shocked him. He drew a slow breath and said through stiff lips, “What’s going on at your end, Faye? I don’t understand this.”

  “It’s my fault. I should have told you more about myself than I did. I’ve been a fool . . . Brad, you’ve heard of Everett Stonecrest and the Celestial Hammer?”

  “Yes, but what—”

  “Please listen. Someone might come in at any moment, now. I work for Everett Stonecrest. I’m his secretary. This is his radio set I’m using.”

  “Good Lord!” Dunn breathed.

  “I know what a surprise that must be,” Faye went on. “It should give you an idea why I haven’t been able to answer your calls. I knew about them, of course, but—I haven’t enough time to explain the situation any further, Brad. What I really wanted to tell you—” Her voice ended on a gasp.

  There was a silence. Dunn stared at the loudspeaker, his brows drawn together over pinched eyes.

  “What is it, Faye?” he demanded tensely. “Are you all right?”

  It was a moment before her answer came.

  “Why, yes . . . yes, Brad. As I was saying, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to answer your calls. I . . . I’ve been very busy.”

  Again her voice had changed. The difference was unmistakable. Her words were flat, deliberate—evasive.

  Dunn sat numbly, conscious of a strange new atmosphere, almost as if an invisible menace peered at him out of nothingness. Was some other person listening in? Was Faye now under a . . . a restraint? He searched carefully for his next words.

  “Faye, this Celestial Hammer situation . . . I hope it doesn’t change things too much for you. You’re not planning to leave, or anything like that?”

  “No, I’ll stay with Mr. Stonecrest as long as he wants me to.”

  Her voice held a lilt of eagerness. He was on the right track.

  DUNN GRIPPED the edge of the table on which the short-wave apparatus stood. His face held a tight, strained fixedness.

  He went on, “I’ve been wanting to see you, Faye. Couldn’t you get away from your work for a while?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’m really very busy, Brad. I wouldn’t be able to leave the house even for ten minutes. The situation may last indefinitely.” She seemed to pause. “I won’t be able to use this radio set again, so it would be best if you didn’t try to call me again. I hope you’ll write, though. You’ll remember I’m at Mr. Stonecrest’s Lake Grove house.” Another pause. “I’ve already taken up too much valuable time, Brad. I’ll have to sign off. Hope your worries about me are ended. ’Bye.”

  “Yes,” Dunn said. “Yes. I understand. Thanks for calling, Faye. I’ll drop you a line as soon as I can. Don’t work too hard—and good luck.” Silence closed down over the room once more. Dunn sat staring at the loudspeaker, still gripping the table edge.

  Faye Manning—and Everett Stonecrest. Everett Stonecrest—and the Celestial Hammer. The relationship stunned him. He would never have guessed that a relationship could possibly exist. Faye Manning was a voice belonging to a girl he had never seen, about whom he knew almost nothing. Everett Stonecrest was a mysterious figure, who in the past several days had assumed legendary proportions. He had prophesied a miracle—and the miracle had taken place.

  It was Stonecrest’s radio set that Faye had been using. It was in Stonecrest’s Lake Grove mansion that Faye was staying.

  Or was being kept by force. Dunn thought of the queer change in her voice, the clever way she had responded to his cues, giving him information under the very nose of whoever it was that had evidently been listening. If he had interpreted that information correctly, Faye was in trouble of some bizarre sort. She was asking for help. That appeared to be what she had meant by saying she hoped he would write.

  He knew it would be useless to take those suspicions to the police. They would require more substantial evidence before they took any action against a man of Stonecrest’s importance. Stonecrest was the man who in some miraculous, inexplicable way had saved a large part of the Earth from destruction, the man whose very word kept at bay a tremendous bludgeon in the sky.

  Dunn shook his head. If anything at all was going to be done to help Faye, he would have to do it. Alone. In the face of whatever danger it was she had warned him against. This danger, it seemed, had arisen because of his radio calls to her. It could become an immediate thing if he tried to reach her in person. But there were impulses that made a man willing to face danger.

  THE SUDDEN ringing of the door-bell made Dunn straighten tensely in his chair. The sound seemed to have come in answer to his thoughts. Was this the threat of which Faye had warned him? It was too late in the evening for a visit by anyone he knew.

  He rose slowly to his feet, listening to the doorbell ring again. He looked at the radio, hesitated, his mind racing. Then his lips flattened against his teeth, and he left the room, hurrying through the dimly lighted interior of the bungalow. He lived alone, having kept up the house after the last of his parents had gone. The bungalow had advantages an apartment lacked, providing the space he needed for tools, experiments and hobbies.

  In his bedroom Dunn reached under the night table beside the bed, where he kept hidden a .45 Army automatic in a spring clip holder. He went to the front door, flicked on the porch light and peered through the door’s small glass window.

  There was no one on the porch. The walk that led to the street was empty of life.

  A messenger, Dunn thought abruptly. Perhaps Faye hadn’t been certain of reaching him by radio and had sent a telegram, or a special delivery letter. Deciding from the dark front windows that nobody was at home, the messenger had just left.

  Dunn hastily unlocked the door and started down the steps toward the sidewalk. If he hurried, he could catch the messenger before—

  The sudden scrape and rustle of motion came as he was leaving the steps. Senses flaring in alarm, he
whirled. In the split-second before the blow fell, he saw the looming dark shape of the man who had been hiding in the shadows at the side of the porch. He saw the upraised arm, saw the glinting object gripped in the hand.

  Then—a burst of light and pain and a rushing descent into darkness . . .

  WHEN DUNN regained consciousness in the shadows at the side of the house, where his attacker evidently had dragged him, he found that the porch light had been turned off and the door closed. Gingerly touching the blood-encrusted bruise on his head, he went heavily up the steps and let himself in with his key. In the bathroom he ran cold water over his face and scalp and sent his foggy thoughts back over what had happened.

  The attack didn’t seem to make sense. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble just to hit him over the head. If this was the peril Faye had mentioned, then those behind it appeared to be laying down on the job.

  It was a short time later that he thought of the radio set, which he now recalled had been left turned on. He went to switch it off—and halted in angry dismay as he came in sight of the table on which it stood.

  Someone had taken a hammer from the tool cabinet, had very thoroughly and deliberately beaten the set into complete ruin.

  CHAPTER II

  LAKE GROVE was an exclusive residential suburb within less than an hour’s drive of the city. Dunn reached it in the early afternoon, driving his coupe.

  He stopped at a service station on the edge of the downtown district. While the gas tank was being filled, he left the car to stretch his legs. He noticed the station attendant covertly studying him as the latter replaced the tank cap. The attendant was a lean, shrewd-faced man, around Dunn’s own age. His eyes might have been curious, but they were friendly. They seemed to invite the question Dunn had been planning to ask.

  “I’m looking for the place where Everett Stonecrest lives,” Dunn said, as he paid for the gas. “Can you tell me how to reach it from here?”

  The attendant’s interest sharpened. “Sure. The house is easy to find.” He deftly sketched directions. “You know Stonecrest?” he asked finally.

  “I’ve never met him, but I’m hoping to.”

  “We’ll, you’re in for plenty of competition.”

  Dunn was faintly startled “How do you mean?”

  “All kinds of people have been passing through town, on their way to see this Stonecrest guy,” the attendant said. “There’s been loads of them every day, mostly coming in by train and bus. Newspaper reporters, scientists, religious organizations, and just plain nosey Parkers. There’s a regular mob in front of Stonecrest’s place, from what I hear. Police had to be sent out to keep order.”

  The attendant paused, shaking his head. “Beats me, the way this Stonecrest got so popular all of a sudden. Everybody talking about him, crowds of people trying to get in to see him, radio and newspapers full of stuff about him and that hunk of rock in the sky he calls the Celestial Hammer. You’d hardly know there was a war going on any more. But a week ago you wouldn’t know Stonecrest was alive. Nobody knew anything about him—and as far as that goes, they still don’t. Take me. I’ve lived here a long time, and Stonecrest’s lived here even longer than that, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard his name mentioned before that Celestial Hammer pitch of his. I don’t know anybody in town who’s ever seen him—and I know most of the people in town, too.”

  Dunn nodded his understanding. He had spent the morning looking up information on Stonecrest, and the results had been disappointingly meager.

  Among the few facts he had gleaned were that Stonecrest was wealthy, past middle age, and lived alone with a handful of servants. He seemed to have no living relatives, no immediate friends. He belonged to no clubs or organizations, never attended social functions of any kind. He was rumored to have a strong interest in science and to maintain a laboratory in his home. There were numerous blank spots in Stonecrest’s life that apparently were explained by exploration trips to remote and little-known regions of the earth.

  THE ATTENDANT went on, “Wish I knew what to make of this Celestial Hammer deal Stonecrest is putting over. Most of the people I’ve talked to really think he can control the thing. They think he’s a messiah, like they say in the newspapers, that he was given a heavenly power to keep the world from being wiped out by atomic bombs. But me, I don’t know. Scientists say the Celestial Hammer’s a planetoid, something like the moon, only a lot smaller, and made out of common, ordinary rock, just like we got here on Earth. Sure, there’s been talk about the thing being too smooth and round to be an ordinary planetoid, but that doesn’t get away from the fact it’s made out of rock. How can anybody control a rock? Especially a rock as big as they say the planetoid is?”

  “Stonecrest did it,” Dunn returned. “Not that I’m plugging for him. But Stonecrest said the planetoid wouldn’t hit Earth—and it didn’t. That was after most scientists said there was no hope that the Earth would escape getting hit. The only question was where.”

  “I know,” the attendant said, shrugging. “It was luck, that’s all. One of those things called a coincidence. Stonecrest took a gamble, with all the odds against him—and he just happened to be right. That doesn’t mean he’s been chosen by God, like a lot of people claim.”

  “I hope so,” Dunn said grimly. “If he actually can control the planetoid . . . well, that’s too much power for any man to have.” He climbed back into the coupe.

  As though on a sudden impulse, the attendant leaned detainingly in the window opening. “Look. You were in the last war, weren’t you?”

  “Three years,” Dunn said, “European theatre.”

  “I was in Europe myself, and I usually know an ex-G.I. when I see one. It’s something about the way they look and talk. And any time I can help an ex-G.I.—”

  “Anyhow, if you really got to see Stonecrest, I can give you a tip. I learned a few things about his place lately. There’s a side road that leads to a service drive at the back of the estate. It isn’t hard to find. You just have to know where to turn off the highway.”

  The attendant took a pencil and a business card from one of the pockets of his uniform shirt. He sketched rapidly on the back of the card, explaining as he did so.

  “Here,” he said at last. “You’ll have a better chance of getting in that way than at the front. You’d need a tank to get through the mob out there. The rest is up to you. Good luck. And by the way, my name’s Jerry Camp.”

  Dunn gave his own name and extended his hand. “Thanks, Jerry. I’ll let you know how I make out.”

  JOE STARTED the coupe and continued along the highway that led through Lake Grove. Watching for the landmarks Camp, had described, he presently found the side road that would take him to the rear of the Stonecrest estate.’

  He did not turn into it at once. A considerable distance down the highway he saw signs of a crowd. Long lines of cars were parked on both sides of the highway, and numerous groups of people were visible around them. Even at that, Dunn knew he was seeing only part of the crowd. From what Camp had told him of the locality, it was clear that the throng overflowed the road that ran past the front of the Stonecrest mansion. This road lay parallel to the one at whose mouth Dunn had halted.

  Dunn put the coupe back into motion, swinging into the gravel-paved side road. His encounter with Jerry Camp had been a stroke of luck. He hadn’t guessed that a crowd would be among the obstacles he faced in attempting to learn what had happened to Faye Manning. He would have been lost in the throng as completely as a drop of water in a lake.

  His sense of foreboding grew. Sight of the crowd had given him perspective on the incredible situation in which—equally incredible—he had become involved. The whole thing had seemed unreal before, unreal and distant, like a drama taking place on another world. The Celestial Hammer had seemed a fantastic, if not wholly imaginary, threat. And Stonecrest himself had been little more than a vague shadow behind the sensations of the printed page.

  Even the attack of the pre
vious night had seemed an unrelated happening. An attack, Dunn realized, that had been made principally to destroy his short-wave broadcasting equipment. The evident motive had been to silence his calls to Faye. For those calls could prove dangerous, if authorities were led to investigate the reason why they were going unanswered.

  The situation was no longer unreal, no longer distant. He was caught up in it, being swept along by its living current.

  The crowd had given him a fresh view of something else—the vast importance of the Celestial Hammer in human affairs and the sinister power latent in Stonecrest’s apparent control of it. The crowd, Dunn realized, had not gathered to mock or to show disbelief. It had gathered to seek guidance—to be led. And History showed repeatedly that it was upon the backs of their sycophantic followers that men with even less impressive claims to leadership had climbed to dominance.

  A terrible weapon in itself, the Celestial Hammer was even more potent when regarded as an answer to human hopes and beliefs. It was an embodiment of might greater than any man had ever known. A strange role, Dunn thought, for an object which in the beginning had been considered a mere tramp from space, a harmless wanderer expected to do no more than pass Earth’s back fence on its return to obscurity.

  ASTRONOMERS had discovered the planetoid several months before. The news of its arrival had diverted little attention from the progress of the war with the Slav-Asian Powers, a war which at the time had produced new reverses for the Western Allies. Calculations based on a study of its motion through the Solar System had indicated that it would pass Earth by a comfortably safe margin. The object itself had not been regarded as large enough to cause serious disturbances on Earth’s surface while in passage.

  The planetoid was described as being approximately four-hundred miles in diameter, perfectly spherical in shape, with a smooth rock surface of high albedo. Its unusual roundness and smoothness had been considered puzzling at the very start. There were theories that it was of artificial rather than natural origin. One even went so far as to suggest that the planetoid was a space ship, its hollow interior containing passengers in a state of suspended animation.