The Silver Menace

by Murray Leinster

  CHAPTER VI.

  Davis smiled expansively and idiotically as he looked across the dinnertable at Nita. Gerrod and Evelyn tried to join in his happiness, butthey were both worried over the ever-increasing threat of the SilverMenace. The government's tall dykes had proven useless, and even thenthere were creeping sheets of the sticky slime expanding over the wholecountryside. Davis and Nita, however, were utterly uninterested in suchthings. They gazed upon each other and smiled, and smiled. Evelynlooked at them indulgently, but Gerrod began to be faintly irritatedat their absorption in each other when the world was threatened withsuffocation under a blanket of slimy horror.

  "It is indeed wonderful," he said with a quizzical smile, "that you twohave decided to marry each other, but has it occurred to either of youthat there is quite an important problem confronting the world?"

  "Yes," said Davis quite seriously. "Nita's father has to be placatedbefore we can marry."

  "Please!" said Gerrod in a vexed tone. "Please stop looking at eachother for one instant. I know how it feels. Evelyn and I indulge evenat this late date, but for Heaven's sake think of something besidesyourselves for a moment."

  "Oh, you mean the silver stuff," said Nita casually. "Daddy has offereda huge reward to any one who can fight it successfully. He and half adozen other steamship men put together and made up a purse. About twomillions, I believe."

  Davis was looking at her, paying but little attention to what she wassaying, simply absorbed in looking. Gerrod saw his expression.

  "Don't you _ever_ use your head?" he demanded. "Here you are worryingabout Nita's father, and there you have a reward offered that wouldclear away all his objections at once."

  "Why--why, that's an idea!" said Davis.

  "Glad you think so," said Gerrod acridly. "Suppose you two talk thingsover. You have a brain, Davis, even if you rarely use it."

  Davis laughed good-naturedly.

  After dinner Evelyn and her husband retired to the laboratory again.Neither of them wanted to waste any time that might be useful indeveloping a means of fighting the Silver Menace. They were deep intheir work when Davis and Nita rushed in upon them.

  "We've got it!" said Davis dramatically.

  Nita was clinging to his arm, and looked immensely proud of him.

  "What have you?" asked Gerrod practically.

  "A way to clear off the Silver Menace," said Davis. "You know theanimalcules have very fragile little shells. In the war we had tofight submarines with armored shells. We got the subs with depth bombsdropped near them. The concussion smashed them up. Now let's take bombsand drop them in the silver sea. The concussion will wreck the littleshells for miles around."

  Gerrod thought the idea, over carefully.

  "It might turn the trick," he said thoughtfully.

  Davis beamed.

  "We'll try it at once," he said enthusiastically. "Or, rather, we'llstart first thing in the morning. We must have light to experiment by.I'll phone the aviation field at once to have the big plane ready."

  "I'm going, too," said Nita determinedly.

  "We'll all go," said Davis expansively.

  The plane left the ground shortly after daybreak. It was a curioussight to see the absolutely cloudless sunrise. The sky paled to theeast, then glowed fiercely red, lightened to orange and the sun rolledup above the horizon. The big airship circled grandly until it hadreached a height of nearly ten thousand feet, then swung for the eastand sped away.

  Nita sat in the seat beside the pilot, her face flushed withexcitement. Gerrod and Evelyn occupied seats farther back, and thesingle engineer leaned against the rear of the car, where he couldkeep both ears open to the roar of his engines. The twin bomb racksalong the outside of the car were filled with long, pear-shaped,high-explosive missiles, and the electric releasing switches were closebeside Davis' hand. A case of hand grenades was carefully packed in thecar, too.

  The plane passed over green fields far below, with strangely stilland shining streams and rivers winding in and out. From the banksof most of those streams glistening blankets of a silvery texturespread slowly and inexorably over the surrounding fields. Before themthey saw what appeared to be the end of the world. Green fields andluxuriantly foliated forests gave place to a field of shining silver,which undulated and clumsily followed the conformation of the land andobjects it had overwhelmed. Here one saw ungainly humps that seemedmade of burnished metal. The rounded contours told that great treeshad succumbed to the viscid mass of animalcules. There was a group ofmore angular forms with gaping black orifices in their glittering sidestold of a village that had been abandoned to the creeping horror. Theopen windows of the houses yawned black and amazed, though now and thenthick stalactites hung pendulously across their openings.

  Above all these the big plane sped. It swept on toward the open sea--orwhat had been the open sea until the Silver Menace had appeared. Soonthe shore was left behind, and the huge a?roplane was flying betweenthe two skies--the real sky above and the reflected sky below. Onlya thin line from far inland showed dark. All the rest seemed but auniverse of air without a horizon or any sign of tangibility. Daviskept his eyes on his instruments, and presently announced:

  "I think we're far enough out. We'll drop our first bomb here."

  He pressed the release switch as he spoke. The plane lifted a littleas the heavy bomb dropped. For a few seconds there was no sound butthe roaring of the motors, but then the reverberation of the explosionbelow reached them.

  "Take a look below," said Davis, banking the machine sharply andbeginning to swing in a narrow circle.

  Gerrod looked down. He saw what seemed to be a ring of yellowish smoke,and a dark-blue spot in the middle of the silvery mass beneath them.

  "It did something," he reported, "There's a dark spot on the surface. Ican't judge how large it is, though."

  Davis released a second bomb, and a third. Gerrod could watch them asthey fell. They dwindled from winged, pear-shaped objects to dots. Thenthere was a flash far below and a spurting of water and spray. In amoment that had subsided, and he saw a second and larger dark-blue spotbeside the first.

  "I believe you've done it," said Gerrod excitedly. "You've certainlydestroyed the silvery appearance. Dare you go lower?"

  "Surely," said Davis cheerfully. The plane dived like an arrow, andflattened out barely five hundred feet above the surface.

  Gerrod examined the dark spots through glasses. The disturbance had notcompletely abated, and he could see indubitable waves still radiatingfrom the Spot where the bombs had fallen. Davis grinned like a boy whenGerrod told him.

  "We'll land in the open space and make sure," he said suddenly, and theplane dived again.

  Before Gerrod could protest they were just skimming the surface ofthe silver sea. The plane settled gently into the now liquid spot ofocean, and Davis shut off the motors. The occupants of the cabin lookedeagerly out of the windows. All about them, in a space perhaps sixtyor seventy yards across, the water was yellowed and oily, but wascertainly water, and not the horrible, jellylike stuff the world hadso much cause to fear. The concussion from the high-explosive bomb hadshattered the fragile shells of the silver animalcules, and, with theirprotection gone, they had relapsed into liquid. At the edge of thatspace, however, the silver-sea began again, as placid and malignant asbefore.

  The plane floated lightly on the surface while the little partycongratulated itself.

  "It works," said Davis proudly. Nita squeezed his hand ecstatically.

  "I knew he'd think of something," she announced cheerfully.

  Evelyn and Gerrod were estimating the area of cleared water withgradually lengthening faces.

  "Let's see how much space a hand grenade clears," suggested Evelynthoughtfully.

  Davis opened the case and took out one of the wicked little bombs. Hewriggled through a window and out on the massive lower plane of theflying boat. Balancing himself carefully, he flung the grenade somesixty yards into the untouched silver sea. It burst with a crac
kingdetonation and amid a fountain of spume and spray. The four of themeyed the resultant area of clear water.

  "How wide do you suppose that is?" asked Gerrod rather depressedly.

  "Ten--no, fifteen yards by fifteen."

  So excited were they all that they did not notice a phenomenon thatbegan almost instantly. The tiny animalcules that formed the silversea reproduced rapidly when given merely moisture. Here they had thatmoisture, and, in addition, the bodies of all their dead comradesto feed upon. The conditions were ideal for nearly instantaneousreproduction. As a result the waves from the high-explosive bombs hadhardly subsided when the open space began, almost imperceptibly, to beclosed by fresh masses of the Silver Menace. The open space becamecovered with a thin film which became thicker--thicker----

  "And how much explosive was in that grenade?"

  "Two ounces of TNT." Davis began to catch the drift of the questions,and his happy expression was beginning to fade away.

  "Two ounces of TNT cleared up roughly a hundred and fifty square yardsof silver sea. That's, say, seventy-five square yards to the ounce ofhigh explosive." Evelyn was working rapidly with her pencil. "Thatworks out--five hundred pounds of TNT needed to clear a square mile ofthe Silver Menace. We have fifteen hundred miles of coast that has beeninvaded to an average depth of at least five miles."

  Gerrod took up the calculations with a dismal face. His pencil movedquickly for a moment or so.

  "We'd need over eighteen hundred tons of TNT to clear our coasts," hesaid dolefully. "That wouldn't touch the silver sea itself or keep itfrom growing again. It grew inland those five miles in two weeks atmost. That's nine hundred tons a week needed to hold our own withoutattacking the silver sea at all. We'd have to have forty-six thousandtons a year to _hold_ it, let alone go after the beasts out here, andin the meantime we'll have no rain, consequently no crops. It's acheerful outlook."

  They had been oblivious of what was happening immediately about theseaplane.

  Nita first saw the danger.

  "Look!" she gasped.

  They had been too much absorbed in gloomy thoughts to notice theirpredicament. The open space in which they had landed was now a shining,glittering mass of the Silver Menace. But what Nita pointed to was ofmore imminent danger. The sticky, horrible mass was creeping up thefloat on which the seaplane rode and up the smaller floats at the endsof the wings. Tons of the silver horror had already accumulated uponthe under surface of the great planes and weighted down the a?roplaneuntil it was impossible for it to rise in the air. And it continued tocreep up and over the body. In a little while the seaplane would beoverwhelmed by the viscid, evil-smelling, deadly little animalcules.