Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (122 page)

“Possibly you’re right,” acknowledged Laurie. He favored the skylight with a look of extreme distaste.

“Now,” Graham continued, “reports we’ve collected since we discovered the shoo-fly effects of short-wave therapy cabinets show that the luminosities are susceptible to a radio-band stretching from two centimeters to about one and a half meters. They don’t die. They just skedaddle as if stung.”

“My guess is that those impulses hamper the whirl of their surface electrons,” Laurie opined. “But they don’t penetrate.”

“Quite! And penetration’s what we’ve got to achieve, not sometime next year, or next month, or next week, but within a few hours! We’ve chopped at Viton timber and have been smacked in the eye by the splinters. With luck, we’re going to bore into their hungry guts by means of polarization. Either that, or we can start mooing, for we revert to what we’ve always been—-just a herd of goddarn cows!” He looked squarely at Laurie. “You’ve got fifty hours. Start at two centimeters and work up.”

“We’ll do it!” swore Laurie. He gave sharp orders to his band. The tiny group— dwarfed by the hugeness of place—bustled into activity.

To one side, the teleprinter operator transmitted information as Laurie recited his intentions. Silent but super sensitive microphones also picked up his voice, carried it away in a dozen directions and to varying distances. Scanners fixed to the steel roof trusses recorded the scene from above.

With Wohl at his side, Graham hurried toward the door, and as he reached it the scanners picked up and transmitted a hideous incident that plunged dramatically into the screens of faraway receivers.

All the lights went out simultaneously, the switchboard blew a shower of hot, copper-smelling sparks, and a blaze of vampire blue swelled through an open hopper in the north wall. Elusive gleams of blue reflected the invading Viton from the polished surfaces of jumbled apparatus, shifted and flickered as the apparition arched forward and glided down to floor level.

A human face, fearfully distorted, made leprous by the illumination, sweated directly in the luminosity’s path—a homoburger waiting the bite! Hysterical gabbling poured from the face’s twitching lips, gabbling that ended a a long hoarse sigh.

Helpless feet dragged on the floor immediately below the glowing devil, scuffled loosely around, rapped on table legs. The brilliant orb bobbed up and down, a limp form dangling beneath it. It made a couple of violent jerks, as if forcing energy-milk from reluctant udders. Glass toppled from an adjacent table, hit the floor, and bounced around horrible imitation of the bobbing globe.

Somebody began noisily to vomit as red flame lanced vividly from the laboratory’s west side. Dull, purplish spots appeared momentarily on the invader’s scintillating surface. More flame; the sharp, hard crack of the heavy weapon being magnified to deafening proportions.

The luminosity dropped its burden as if discarding an old and empty sack. Vengefully, it shot westward, making a meteoric curve straight into the opposing stream of fire. A voice screamed a terrified obscenity, choked, was silent. The Viton made five savage jerks of guzzlement against the wall.

Swiftness of its departure was breathtaking. Blue whizzed back to the hopper, shone within its open frame, and then was outside. It shrank toward the cloud-wrapped sky. Joe, returning from a bender.

Feet stumbled, voices sounded loudly and querulously in the darkness of a place receiving poor illumination from outside. An unseen hand was quick to close the hopper, making the gloom still deeper. Graham swung wide the door, permitting entry of the afternoon’s light.

Away in the farther corner, somebody ran a pencil beam over the switchboard and fuse boxes, worked at them with fingers that trembled uncontrollably.

Power suddenly poured through a multitude of overhead bulbs. Laurie ran down the center aisle, kneeled beside an eye-rolling, arm-jerking form. Sensing Graham at his side, he glanced up at the investigator, his eyes straining in a face like marble.

“He’s batty,” observed Graham, in cold, matter of fact tones. The prone man gibbered horribly, clutched Laurie's hand, moped and mowed. “He gave away nothing. He went nuts as it got him.”

“God, this is awful!” breathed Laurie.

“We'll get him away.” He looked at the thin ring of fearful onlookers. One of them still was clutching a crucifix. “Back on the job, you men. Don’t let this get you.” They dispersed, slowly, dazedly. He crossed to the hangar’s west side where Wohl was bending over another limp shape.

“Dead as the dodo,” announced Wohl, unemotionally.

Stooping, Graham extracted a big police positive from the teletype operator’s dead fingers. Placing the weapon on a table, he found a small mirror, reflected light into staring optics. It might have been only his imagination, but he thought he saw that subtle something which is life fade gradually from those upturned eyes.

After searching the victim’s form, he straightened, said, “Not a mark! His heart was stopped!”

A siren wailed along the road outside, died away dismally at the open door. Four police officers entered accompanied by one man in plain clothes. Quietly, without comment, they took out the uniformed corpse, came back for the fallen scientist. He was mouthing noiselessly as they bore him away.

Three of the officers got into the car, drove off. The fourth took his seat at the teletype. The man in plain clothes went up to Laurie.

“I’m Ferguson, the replacement.”

Laurie stood like one stupefied, his gaze wandering over his companions. Nervously, he tugged at one ear while his face asked his unspoken question.

“Organization,” explained Graham. His gesture was a comprehensive sweep indicating the microphones and scanners. “Already your losses have been made good. Go ahead with your task, and let’s have some speed—we’ve got to move quicker than death!”

Dashing out, Graham clambered into a gyrocar, Wohl taking the wheel. He said, “Bet my own speedster is now a wreck somewhere out west.”

“Maybe.” Wohl tooled out to the middle of the concrete. “Where to?”

“Yonkers. There’s an underground laboratory out there. Steve Koenig’s in charge.” Noting Wohl’s curiosity, he added, “There are only two groups in this neighborhood. I’m not revealing where the others are, even to you.”

“Meaning I might be grabbed and tapped for information?” Wohl leered at the sky, and pulled a face. “Where do we stand if the victim is
you?
Or do we then sit down and take it?”

“We will stand. Nobody’s under the delusion that I’m invincible. There are plenty of other groups beside the sixty-four boys I claimed. I’ve had nothing whatever to do with the others, and know nothing about them. People in Washington and other places have placed them where they’ll do the most good. Moreover, nobody in this country knows where South American and European experts are located, and they know nothing of ours.”

“This,” decided Wohl, “certainly is one time when it’s folly to be wise.”

“I’ll say!” Graham’s expression was thoughtful. “Things have been arranged in such a way that the same applies to me as to everyone else—what I don’t know I can’t tell.”

They swung right, the dynamo whirling powerfully. In a smooth rush, they swept around a huge crater in the road. Above the enormous hole was a quarter-mile gap in the shattered skyway, a break from the ragged ends of which stubby lengths of twisted, rusting girders stuck.

“Some banger!” Wohl let his streamlined machine plummet along in top gear. He covered two miles in a fraction over a minute, slowed at an intersection, turned left.

At that point the sky flashed into several times its normal brilliance, for a split second cast sharp, clear-cut shadows across the street. Then the phenomenon was gone. Wohl braked the car to a stop, waited expectantly. Seconds later, the ground quivered. The weakened, unsupported shell of a nearby building collapsed into the road with an appalling roar, filling it with rubble from side to side. Several Vitons suspended in the sky began to zoom to the west.

“That was atomic,” declared Graham. “Some miles out. Probably a rocket.” “If we’d been half an hour ahead—” Wohl left his sentence unfinished.

“We weren’t, and that’s that. No use going on now. Turn her round, Art. I’ll try the Battery.”

They raced downtown, away from the distant and giant mushroom which was crackling with death. Bulleting along, they passed Bank of Manhattan.

Graham remarked, “Seems years since I worked from that office.” He was silent a moment, then added sharply, “Pull up on this corner, Art.”

The gyrocar swung into the curb, stopped. Graham sat hunched in his seat, his eyes on the rearview mirror. Opening the door he writhed out.

“What’s up? Can you see that mushroom from here?” Wohl fiddled with his wheel, glanced inquiringly at the other.

“The twenty-fourth floor. Yes, it was the twenty-fourth.” Graham’s eyes glittered. “Something blue and shining flashed out of an open window on that level just after we passed. I caught sight of it out one corner of my eye. The six middle windows in that row belong to Sangster’s dump.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m pretty sure that it was a luminosity.” The investigator’s features showed ire. “Stick around, Art—I’m going to phone.”

Without waiting for Wohl’s reply, he entered the nearest building, found a telephone in a deserted and half-wrecked ground level office. In strange contrast with its surroundings, the instrument’s visor was intact and functioning perfectly, for a girl’s face blossomed in its tiny screen as his call got through.

“Hi, Hetty!” he gave her the usual cheer.

“Hi!” she smiled mechanically.

“Mr. Sangster there?”

“No. He’s been out all afternoon. I expect him back before five-thirty.” Her voice was peculiarly dull and lifeless, but her smile grew more insistent, more inviting. “Won’t you come along and wait for him, Mr. Graham?”

“Sorry, I can’t. I—”

“We haven’t seen you for such a long time,” she pleaded. “What with most of the buildings around us lying flat, and this one almost deserted, it’s like living on an island, I’m so lonely, so afraid. Can’t you come and chat with me until he arrives?”

“Hetty, I can hardly spare the time.” He felt moved by her cajolery even as he stared fascinatedly at the screen, noting the tiniest quirk of her lips, the slightest flicker of her eyelids.

“From where are you speaking?” Again that dull, lifeless, phonographic voice.

His temper started to rise, and there was sweat in the palms of his hands. Evading her question, he said slowly, “I’ll come around, Hetty. Expect me about five o’clock.”

“That’s fine!” Her smile widened, but her eyes held no collaboratory expression. “Be sure to make it. Don’t disappoint me, will you?”

“You can depend on me, Hetty.

Disconnecting, he glared a long time at the screen from which her familiar features had faded. His fury was tremendous. He worked his fingers as if itching to strangle someone. Giving vent to a hearty expletive, he hurried back to the waiting gyrocar.

“They’ve got Hetty,” he told Wohl. “She talked and acted as if animated by clockwork. The place is a trap.”

“Like the field office was,” remarked Wohl. He swallowed hard, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel while he kept watch on the sky.

“Ten to one my own home is also a trap—both Hetty and Sangster know it well.” His mounting fury colored his voice. His fists clenched into hard bunches.

“They’re creeping nearer and nearer to me every minute. Art, I’m fed up. I can’t stand this hunt much longer. I’m going to step up and smack ’em right in the pan—and to hell with ’em!”

“Really?” said Wohl. He propped an elbow on the wheel and his head on one hand. He studied Graham with academic interest. “Just like that, eh? You pull one down from the heavens and you kick into a pulp whatever it uses for a bottom, eh?” Taking his head off his hand, he shouted, “Don’t talk like a blithering idiot!”

“What’s eating you?”

“Nothing.” Wohl showed his iridium-lined ring. “Nothing’s going to eat you either, not if I can help it.”

“I don’t intend to be eaten. That’s why I want to smack them with a fast one.”

“How’re you going to do that?”

“It depends.” Climbing into the machine, Graham sat and pondered, keeping wary watch through the transparent roof lest any wandering spheres might drift within telepathic range. “If that trap is toothed with Vitons, then I’m merely talking big, because there’s nothing I can do.”

“Ah,” said Wohl, speaking to the windscreen, “he admits it.”

Graham snorted, gave him a look, and added, “But if, as is likely, they’ve left the dirty work to a bunch of dupes, I’m going in. I’m going to go in and kick out their teeth and walk away with Hetty. Anything wrong with that?”

The other thought it over. “H’m, I guess it could be done if they’re relying on dupes. Yeah, you might do it and get away with it, though it’s a hell of a risk. I’ve one objection, though.”

“What’s that?”

“All this ‘I’ stuff you use. Who the heck d’you think you are?” He flashed the ring again.
“We
go in and take Hetty!”

“I didn’t contemplate trying it single-handed, nor even with you. I’m not all that daft!” Graham had a last look at the Bank of Manhattan. “I found a fellow operative when I returned from Washington, and gave him the chore finding the other nine who’re supposed to be functioning hereabouts. If he’s managed to trace them, they’ll be waiting for me at Center Station. We’ll pick them up and see what can be done about this trap. With luck, we may snitch the bait without grabbing the tribulation.” He lay back in his seat. “Bank her along, Art—we’ve got less than one hour.”

He looked over the eight of them, noting their clean, square-jawed confident features, and knowing that the remaining pair would never be found. There should have been ten all told. Every one of these young huskies was aware of that fact, and every one knew equally well that soon their number might be lessened still further. But no consciousness of this was evident in their expressions or bearing. These were men of the Intelligence Service, men trained to compensate for losses by doing the work of the missing—and more.