Half puzzled, he felt himself move toward the door, felt his hands lift the bar that latched it. The metal panel swung inward and a gust of cool night air blew against his face, rousing him a little from his semi-dazed condition. There was a man out there. He was big and burly and was clad in a greasy pair of overalls.
At Sandhurst’s appearance he lowered his head and charged straight for the scientist. Sandhurst was neither a weakling nor a coward, but somehow a strange numbness had taken possession of his limbs, making him awkward and clumsy. The two grappled and fell in a heap just inside the threshold. Sandhurst caught only a brief glimpse of the man’s blank, grease-smeared face and his lifeless, staring eyes. Then a dozen or more like him swarmed in through the door and dragged the scientist out into the open.
Immediately a tingling paralysis, which robbed him of all voluntary motion came over him. His captors released their grip on his arms and he sprawled on the turf like a loose-jointed rag doll.
The pack of greasy begrimed men hurried back into the laboratory. Sandhurst’s head was turned toward the doorway, and so he could see them moving about in the lighted interior. They worked with utmost haste like rescuers in a burning building. The reason for this was not yet apparent to the savant. Nor was it clear to him what they were looking for. There were various kinds of chemical and electrical supplies stored in the upper rooms of the laboratory, but nothing else.
SANDHURST was quite sure that he knew what was about to happen. The hubbub would attract the attention of the men below. They would come up in the elevators and, discovering his predicament, they would try to rescue him. The spell and the strange numbness that had trapped him would fall upon them too. If he could only somehow warn them! First he tried to raise himself up on an elbow, but his effort was entirely without success. His limbs seemed completely dead and immovable. Then he attempted to yell, but his lips did not move and no sound came from his throat.
One of the elevator motors hummed; the gate of the cage jangled open. There were sounds of hurrying feet inside the laboratory; an exclamation of surprise from a man, followed by a sharp command:
“Back up, you bums! Get out o’ my way! Tell me what you did with the Chief before I make myself darned poisonous to you!”
McLennan! Good old Mac! But he was headed straight for inevitable misfortune. Sandhurst heard noises which meant a violent scuffle—the thud of several sharp blows, Mac’s certainly; back at school he had been a notorious scrapper.
He was talking to his opponents again, and by now it seemed that his anger really was mounting: “So you won’t clear out, eh?” Though he could not see what was transpiring within the laboratory, Sandhurst could guess how those insensate creatures were acting; they knew no fear, would give no quarter unless the mysterious entity that guided them gave the command.
There was a flurry of pistol shots, and a moment later the intruders retreated from the laboratory; once outside, they paused and stood looking back. One crumpled to the ground.
Sandhurst saw McLennan’s burly form against the lighted doorway, saw his face in the shifting purple glow of the meteor. Mac looked about and located the sprawling body of his chief on the wet grass not twelve paces from him.
“Mert—! My God—! What—!”
Sandhurst would willingly have given his life at that moment if he could only have given a little gesture of warning, but as far as his own mind was concerned, his body was as rigid as if it had been frozen in ice. And now Mac was falling under the same spell. Sandhurst could see his look of concern change to one of puzzlement and then to alarmed comprehension. Presently he too would be sprawling there on the ground unable to move.
No, Mac was turning toward the door—working his way laboriously toward the sheltering interior. One foot ahead of the other—slowly, painfully as though a viscid fluid, waist-deep, impeded his progress. The muscles stood out on his hard-set jaws and beads of sweat glinted on his forehead under the rays of the meteor. The madmen stood back unhindering.
Mac was faltering. There was a scurry of footsteps inside the laboratory. “Give me a hand Jim!” Mac gasped.
Jim Townsend, chief chemist, reached out and grasped the fortunate Scot by the belt and jerked him to safety.
Merton Sandhurst detected a weird life in his paralyzed limbs; they were behaving independent of any orders coming from his brain. Now he was rising to his feet and now he was racing off in the company of the other night prowlers, in the direction of the road which led to Ishbel. A purple globe, glowing like the meteor itself, danced high in the air ahead of him.
What was going to happen now? What was it all about, anyway?
In a vague sort of way Sandhurst was beginning to comprehend.
Over his shoulder he heard McLennan shouting: “I’ve got an idea, Chief, and we’re coming after you. Watch for us. So long, Chief!”
Sandhurst wanted desperately to look back and give some sign that he had understood these reassuring words.
However, though his body was beyond his control, his mind remained as clear and active as ever. He saw the men who loped along beside him. Their faces were all blank and set, and ghastly in the weird light; yet he sensed that behind those frozen masks were other imprisoned minds as eager as his own for freedom.
He could not look up at the meteor, still he could tell by the shrunken shadow that bobbed along beneath his feet that it had already reached zenith in its hurried light across the sky. There, he knew was hidden the secret of his strange paralysis. An emanation of some kind was coming from the glittering visitor, had snapped the connection between his brain and his body and perhaps was even now directing his and his companions’ flight toward Ishbel.
Such a supposition made imperative the admission that there was an intelligent agent acting somewhere; and intelligence meant life. Still, that appeared to be out of the question. He was quite sure that a world only a quarter of a mile in diameter could not harbor living creatures. Its gravity would be so ridiculously weak that any atmosphere or water on its surface would float away in an instant.
Was it possible that the meteor was a space ship built by an alien race? No, that was unlikely; although a space vessel would have the visitor’s regular form. Try as he might, Sandhurst could find no sensible solution to the problem.
He watched the phosphorescent globe that flickered and wavered back and forth several hundred yards ahead of him, and high up in the air. Always it retreated at just the rate that he and his companions moved, apparently guiding them like a purposeful will-o’-the-wisp, along the road to Ishbel.
CHAPTER II
The Attack from the Air
A large truck rumbled up from the rear and came to a stop. Mechanically, without knowing why they did it, the men clambered into its dusty gravel box. Sandhurst caught a brief glimpse of the driver. He too was obviously under some external influence. Behind the first of the van other automobiles straggled, their headlights slanting yellowly through the faint haze of the roadway. These vehicles doubtless all carried men flocking toward Ishbel for a purpose, the nature of which they themselves were quite unable to guess.
Sandhurst was crouching in the rear of the truck’s crowded box. Opposite him, directly behind the cab, were two people who had evidently been passengers before his party had boarded. The lights of the vehicles behind flickered and danced on their faces. Both were very young, somewhere between eighteen and twenty, he judged.
The scientist gave a gasp when he saw that one of them was a girl, and the stark cruelty of the unknown enemy that held them in thrall jolted into full realization within his mind. In spite of her disheveled condition, and the vacuous look of dumb horror in her face, she was strikingly beautiful. Her wavy black hair, unrestrained by any head-covering, blew about her cheeks, which were unnaturally pallid now, even through the faint rose of make-up which she had tastefully put on. She wore a light blue dress, and on her bosom gleamed a speck of gold which Sandhurst surmised was a sorority pin. She had no coat, and her white
arms trembled visibly, partly because of fright and partly because the night air of early Autumn was chilly.
Her companion too was recognizable as a student, probably belonging to the University, which was situated only seven miles east of Ishbel. Sandhurst felt that somewhere he had seen him before. He too had dark wavy hair, and in his thin ascetic face his prominent eyes gleamed with a strange eager, determined light which immediately attracted the scientist’s attention. They were staring at Sandhurst with an insistent, dumb plea in them which for a moment almost unnerved the savant.
He saw the muscles suddenly tighten over the narrow jaws and the shadows flicker in the thin cheeks. Then, wonder of wonders, the youth spoke!
The words were few and gaspingly uttered: “Mr. Sandhurst— I know you— For Fay’s sake—help. Can't—” He stopped and slumped back against the cab, panting as though spent by some tremendous effort.
His act was a revelation to the scientist. The meteor ray, if such it be, was not unconquerable! Determination, strong will, perhaps practice, could surmount it if only in a limited way.
He had recognized the young college man. He was Vance Pierre, pianist, and scholarship student at the University. Several times Sandhurst had seen his picture in the papers, and once he had heard him play—only once, for Vance scorned the radio, but it was a thing to remember for life.
Sandhurst was sure that it was the fine intellectual powers of the young artist that was the determining factor in his momentary escape from the controlling influence of the meteor. Perhaps his love for the girl, who was apparently his sweetheart, had helped too.
He wanted desperately to reassure these two young people, and to allay their fears if he could, although he knew that the calamity that had fallen upon mankind was in all probability world-wide, following the path of the meteor.
“The spell will pass soon,” he wanted to say. Fiercely he tried to force the words to his unwilling tongue, fighting until beads of moisture stood out on his forehead. Yet he only succeeded in making his lips move slightly, incoherently, in a way that conveyed no meaning.
Still he would not give up. If Pierre could escape even slightly, perhaps he, by constant trying and practicing, could win a limited freedom from the compulsion ray.
Sandhurst was so engrossed in the intense labor of making his muscles and vocal cords respond to his will that they had come well within the limits of Ishbel before he was conscious of it. The street lights were burning now, for the controlling entity had evidently decreed that the distant generators should be started.
The purple meteor had dipped below the horizon; yet its influence persisted, for in its wake across the heavens it left a fiery train that flickered and shifted like an aurora borealis.
Ishbel was a filthy little city where iron was mined and smelted. Its streets were lined with rows of spindly box-elder saplings, behind which crouched shabby dwelling houses, each a duplicate of the others. At the edge of the town, opposite the point where the truck on which Sandhurst was a passenger, entered, towering rows of blast furnaces reared, and about their bases squatted, amid heaps of slag, the buildings of brick and corrugated iron, that housed the auxiliary equipment.
The city was thronged with people. Miners and their wives and children, farmers collected from the surrounding country, well-dressed business men, a few students; folks from almost every walk of life were represented.
The concourse was the most orderly that Sandhurst had ever seen. There was no shouting, no laughter, not a single unnecessary gesture. Everyone walked in orderly columns, but their slow, measured steps, and their blank faces spoiled the effect, making it horrible.
IN the midst of the van of other vehicles, the truck proceeded across the town. It paused beside a barren area of level ground not far beyond the mine shafts and the smelting furnaces.
The place was certainly acres in extent. At regular intervals around its rim, oily bonfires gave illumination, lighting up dimly the thousands of human figures that had already collected there. In the air above, a score or so of purple, luminescent globes similar to the one that had led the van of cars along the road to Ishbel, wheeled and zigzagged restlessly through the smoke of the fires.
Mechanically, incapable of resisting some order given them by the controlling entity, the occupants of the truck clambered to the ground and joined a long line of others who moved with slow lock-step toward the center of the lighted area.
Sandhurst hoped that he would not be separated from Vance Pierre and the girl for he already felt a fatherly affection for the two young people.
Yes, perhaps he was going to be lucky. Fay was directly ahead of him in the line, and Vance behind.
The column passed a pile of shovels, and, as each came abreast of it he selected one and carried it with him. Fay’s turn came, and she followed the example of the others, just as did all of the women who were scattered indiscriminately along the line.
Some minutes later Sandhurst and his two youthful companions were feverishly at work digging at the center of the open area. About them was a vast throng of slaves similarly employed, and their numbers rapidly increased as the hordes of unwilling recruits from the surrounding country poured into Ishbel. Already several steam shovels had gone into action to aid the human chattels. A light railway was being laid, over which to haul the loosened earth to the dumping place. Many motor trucks had been pressed into service for the same purpose.
AN hour passed. The purple meteor was again hurtling across the sky toward the east.
During that hour Sandhurst had labored as he never believed that a human being could labor. His muscles ached furiously, for though his motor nerves were out of control, his sensory nerves were as keen and active as ever. His lips were dry and his face burned with perspiration. Ragged blisters had formed themselves on the palms of his hands.
And, like his body, his mind was furiously active. So many novel and horrible impressions were coming to his brain, which seemed like an impotent intelligence sealed up in a block of crystal, that they blended and blurred into one vast, dominating impression which might be expressed by the single word—holocaust. He felt as a personal experience the thunder of truck motors being started; the scrape of heavy tires against loose earth; the thud of sledges; the rhythmic movements of thousands of tortured bodies in the ruddy light of the illuminating fires; the click of shovels; the mysterious luminous globes that wheeled overhead and, ruling everything, the purple meteor, making the earth an inferno or fairyland of moving light and shadow. Its soft bluish rays seemed like a symbol of cold, calm power.
It was not holocaust for that implied confusion. There was no confusion. Sandhurst realized that he was a tiny cog in an incredibly huge and efficient machine—the human race working against itself for some unknown purpose, and directed by a thing of which it knew nothing.
A furious tide of anger was rising within him. Robbed of all means of expressing it, he knew that unless he found some way to fight the controlling entity, there could be but one consequence for him—insanity. And he neither knew of a way to suppress his anger nor desired to do so.
He could hear the sobbing breathing of the girl close beside him. As he worked about the trucks which the controlling entity had commanded them to load, he had occasional glimpses of her. Fay’s position might almost be humorous if it had not been so horrible. Her clothing was dirty and torn now, and her face was grimed with clay and perspiration. Sandhurst’s own powerful body ached and burned as though it were afire. He could imagine then, how Fay felt.
Once more he tried mightily to break his bonds. Some sign of his effort must have been apparent, for he heard Vance Pierre’s voice close to his ear:
“I’m winning, Mr. Sandhurst. Keep up the fight and you’ll win too.” The words were halting; nevertheless there was a hopeful encouraging ring in them.
Inch by inch, with almost infinite effort, Sandhurst began to win ground from the power that ruled him. First he sought to move his lips; succeeding slightly in
this, he directed his attention to his fingers, and at length managed to move them too. He tried to direct his muscles in the process of digging; yes, he finally found that he could place the shovel where he chose, and could bear down on it when he chose. Though the controlling entity was a hard taskmaster, it was many times more difficult and tiring to resist than to obey. Sandhurst realized that anything like complete immunity from the “force” was probably totally out of the question.
BUT his mind was set on escaping and taking his young friends with him. He knew that the possibilities of doing so were cobweb-thin for fulfilment, yet it was always best to keep the idea of success in mind.
Seeking information concerning the nature of his enemies, he cast occasional glances toward the luminescent globes that wheeled unceasingly in the air above. Frequently one of them came quite close to the ground, and Sandhurst saw that they were two-foot spheres of a transparent, glass-like material. Within the hollow interiors always squatted a pinkish, ovoid thing about the size of a football. Slender tubular limbs, resembling the many-jointed appendages of spiders, projected from this central portion.
These, then, were the creatures who had usurped man’s position as ruler of the earth. But whence came they? While realizing that the purple meteor was the important instrument in the conquest of the world, he still could not picture it as the abode of life.
And so, at last the tardy dawn began to creep up in the east, making everything look unreal and wraith-like in the ashy half-light. An occasional light puff of breeze blew against Sandhurst’s perspiring body, causing him to shiver with cold. The bonfires which had given illumination through the night had died down to red embers which sent up thin pencilings of gray smoke. A freight train drawing many loaded flatcars came hooting into town, and stopped on a nearby siding. And still the slaves labored on.
Then and Now: Another Collection of Science Fiction Page 6