Synthetic Men Page 12

  “Simply because you are an Earthling, Saran,” returned the Leader. “We trust you and love you like our own. But to remove temptation from your path, lest you slip into Earthly ways again, The Other will be always near you. Do not try to learn his identity; it will be the one you least suspect.”

  Saran was still under the grip of resentment and wonder when Ryg addressed him once again, this time with stabbing force.

  “What is your supreme duty, Saran?” he demanded.

  This key-question immediately plunged the Earthman agent back into his well-learned rôle.

  “My duty is to Korja, the Dark Star,” he said firmly. “And to the flawless civilization it represents. I owe allegiance to Ryg only until death.” He stood straight and tall as he parroted these words. “I will consider my mission finished only when I have succeeded in destroying Hartley and all other interference to our plans. I am ready, Leader.”

  “Then go!” Ryg commanded, and with a filmy tendril he gestured toward the door. “Do not fail, Saran. It is the command of Ryg and the Supreme Command of Korja. Go now!”

  Saran bowed, and turned swiftly to unlock the airtight port. Without another word, he left the space ship and reclosed the door. He had barely moved to a safe distance when, with a hissing wail, the small ship arched into the air. Blazing rocket-flares merged into pinpoints, dissolved in the black sea of night. Then Saran was alone—horribly alone.

  * * *

  He felt a momentary terror. In all this vast world spreading out around him, he knew no living soul. His very life depended on his cleverness in the next few days. Yet in many ways his position resembled that on the planets of the dead star.

  He had known no one of his kind there. Of his early life, before he was rescued by Ryg, he remembered nothing. But sometimes recollections kindled in his mind. Memories of a tall, kindly man striding through a lofty laboratory. Dreams of himself tagging at the man’s heels, asking countless questions. Then of a flight through space—and after that, nothing—

  Saran’s fright blended naturally into anger. Ryg seemed not to care what risks he took, so long as Korja prospered by them. Ryg’s sole interest in him, he felt, was to secure a new world on which the people of the Dark Star could live. For the five planets were becoming too cold to support life.

  Earth was the logical home for them, but first it must be altered, the oxygen-laden atmosphere removed, so that the Korjans’ lacy bodies would not be crushed like a glass globe at the bottom of the sea. Before that could be done, mankind had to be put out of the way. Until Moss Hartley entered the scene, it appeared that life would disappear from Earth very smoothly in the course of sixty or seventy years. Now, drastic measures were called for.

  Yet Saran was loyal. His life had been a preparation for this task, but he owed that life to the Korjans. He had to repay them. Ahead a highway loomed and Saran took it.

  New feelings tingled through him. A boundless sense of freedom claimed him at his ability to stride along unhampered by a bulky pressure-suit such as he’d had to wear on the planets Ryg ruled. His steps were long and springy. Here, there was slightly less gravity to bear down upon him.

  Saran found himself looking forward eagerly to meeting other men of his kind. And women—he could scarcely remember what the word meant. Yet nature had implanted seeds of possessiveness and longing within him; these feelings puzzled and intrigued him, and now he felt on the eve of solving his inner restlessness.

  Saran reached the road and swung along it rapidly. He covered the miles without fatigue. New, fresh blood seemed generating in him like sparkling wine. The warmth of the air, its cleanness, had their way with him. Saran felt as though he were really living!

  He had gone about ten miles when a strange, frightening thing approached him from the rear. It slid along the road like half the shell of a shiny black walnut, light spreading a yellow fan on the macadam before it. Saran’s heart pounded as he dodged out of the way. With a roar, the machine was upon him, grinding to a halt with a slithering of rubber.

  A door popped open. A man’s voice called:

  “Hop in, buddy. Going as far as Los Angeles?”

  * * *

  Saran was gripped by confusion. Inside the car was a form and face similar to his own, yet vastly different. He stared at the man. Then a delighted grin broke on his features, which the pudgy, stout man returned in kind.

  “Thanks!” Saran replied. “Just where I’m going.”

  He sat down on a deep, soft affair of sponge rubber and the machine surged forward once more. Saran, relaxing, studied the driver out of the corner of his eye.

  He felt oddly at ease with him—much more so than when he had sat beside Ryg in the Hall of Science. Sometimes the driver laughed at things he said, as if they were meant to be dryly humorous. But Saran was merely experiencing difficulty in understanding. Once the car owner, groping for a cigarette, muttered:

  “Take the wheel a minute, will you?”

  Saran tried to. The car swerved viciously as he tugged at the wheel, trying literally to tear it loose. The man thought it was an attempt to be funny, but didn’t laugh quite so hard this time. The driver turned to him again.

  “Where ’bouts, buddy?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Saran admitted. “I’m looking for Moss Hartley—”

  “Moss Hartley! Well, it won’t do no harm to look for him. But you’ll darn well go away disappointed if you expect to talk to him. He’s been in conference with them four foreign scientists for a week, they tell me, trying to dope out something on the plague. You’d have no more chance of seeing him than if you was selling brushes. Especially in that outfit.”

  Saran’s glance followed the other’s to his clothing.

  “What—what’s wrong with them?”

  The driver looked apologetic. “Sorry, buddy,” he murmured. “Nothing, except that they haven’t been sporting woolen pants and leather shoes for years. I thought you was going to a masquerade.”

  Saran crimsoned. How many more details like this had they overlooked? he wondered.

  “I guess I do look odd,” he faltered. “You don’t know where I can find him, then?”

  “Sure. At his home in Beverly Hills. If you’re going there, better get off at the next corner and take the Santa Monica car.”

  Saran nodded eagerly. He felt as if he were on the verge of being completely exposed as a saboteur. As the car slowed, he pushed the door open, thanked the man, and hurriedly walked off.

  For some time he stood in a shadow-filled doorway, pondering his next move. At this moment he thanked his stars for the little store of books that had been found in his father’s space ship. From them he’d learned what little he knew of Earthly civilization. But those books couldn’t explain how he was to get in to see Moss Hartley.

  Well, he could do worse than proceed to his home and try, he decided. But if he failed—nothing to do but wait a month until Ryg returned and gave him further orders.

  On the street car, Saran created an amusing situation by pretending—as the passengers thought—not to know what coin to give the conductor. He had been told a dime was the fare to Beverly Hills, and proceeded to study the coins he had in his pocket until he found one labeled, “One Dime.”

  The conductor accepted it and disgustedly jerked a thumb at the interior of the car.

  “Take your seat—drunk!” he snapped.

  Red in the face and still more befuddled, Saran found a seat and hastily slumped down.

  Chapter II

  World of Living Dead

  The Hartley place was a mansion atop a wooded knoll, set well back from the crowded thoroughfares. Saran found no trouble in gaining the front door—but there his worries commenced.

  A grave, unrelenting visage showed in the crack of the door following his knock. As the man did not speak, only stared impatiently at the swart visitor, Saran broke the silence.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Moss Hartley,” he stated.

  Something lik
e a laugh issued from the butler’s lips.

  “So would ten thousand other would-be scientists,” he remarked. “Good night to you, sir.”

  “But you don’t understand!” Saran’s foot protruded to prevent the door from closing. “I know what is causing the plague. I can stop it. Dr. Hartley will want to see me!”

  “All right, boys.” The butler opened the door and a pair of brawny figures sauntered out.

  They took Saran by each arm and spun him about. One of them snarled:

  “All right—crackpot! Try to bust in here like a process server, will you? Take this back to the rest of the screwballs!”

  His fist slammed into the back of the visitor’s head. At the same instant, the second guard aimed a kick at his back. But in the instant before the blow landed, Saran himself came about with a guttural curse.

  Savagely he fastened long fingers about each throat. With a grunt, he brought the men’s heads together. One of them sagged to the lawn as his knees buckled. The other dodged aside, to rush back with swinging fists.

  Saran appeared not to move, but his body wove gracefully from the path of the flying fists. The bullet-headed man came up against him in surprise. Then Saran gently raised his fist up beneath the guard’s chin. Teeth clattered like castanets; the man writhed down.

  When Saran started for the door again, it slammed in his face and a lock clicked. Saran could only stare. After a moment, he moved away, deeply troubled. He did not doubt that he could break the portal down, but that would only earn him more trouble. Somehow, he must get inside, in such a way that Moss Hartley would listen to him. And, listening to him, would doom the world—

  A vibrant, silvery voice brought him spinning about. Within a few feet of him was the loveliest creature Saran had ever seen. It was a girl. A strange sight, indeed, to his eyes, but one that made his pulses quicken.

  Brown, wavy hair framed a pale oval of a face. Laughing red lips mocked the baffled man. A full-curving body was revealed by tight-fitting gold-cloth blouse and skirt.

  “Congratulations!” she was saying. “Out of forty-odd harebrained scientists those two plainclothes men have tackled, you’re the first one to lick them. Not that I mean you’re a harebrained scientist—forgive the implication.”

  “I—I’m sorry about what I had to do. But they attacked me, you see.” Saran regarded the still forms ruefully.

  “Sure,” the girl said. Then: “Well, what’s your plan to save the world?”

  Saran read deep bitterness in her words. But he shook his head.

  “I came here to see Moss Hartley. What I’ve got to say is for him alone.”

  The delicately arched eyebrows raised a trifle.

  “I’m Helen Wade, Dr. Hartley’s secretary,” the answer came quietly. “Perhaps—since you do seem more sensible than the others—I could get you a very brief audience with him.”

  “If you could!” Impulsively, Saran took her forearm in his powerful grip. She winced, then laughed.

  “If it means that much to you—come!” she invited, and led the way around the corner of the house to the rear.

  * * *

  Her private key let them in a back entrance. They passed through several dark, deserted laboratories. Ascending a flight of stairs, Saran asked cautiously:

  “These other men with him—who are they?”

  “Don’t you read the papers?” the answer mocked him. “They are the four leading scientists of the world. Ferguson, of England; Perrin, of France; Rutters, of Germany; and Massetti, of Italy. Any one of them has a reputation greater than that of Doctor Hartley. But his discovery has aroused attention all over this godforsaken world of ours. They were sent here to study his methods by their respective governments.”

  Then they were stopping before an unobtrusive-looking door.

  “Brace yourself, Mister!” the girl smiled. “You’re either coming out of here a hero or a failure.”

  Her polite rap brought a gruff voice through the panel.

  “Who is it?”

  “Miss Wade, Doctor. I have an important visitor to see you. May we come in?”

  Footfalls thumping across a carpet. The door pulled open. For a moment light blinded Saran, so that all he could make out was swirling wreaths of tobacco smoke and dim shapes around a table. His vision clearing, he let his glance go over the tall, rawboned figure at the door. The man’s hair was disheveled, his coat off, a reeking pipe between his teeth.

  “Important, eh?” the doctor snapped. “Who the devil is he?”

  Saran put in hurriedly: “John Saran, Doctor. I have a—a plan you might—”

  “My God, Miss Wade!” Hartley yanked the pipe from his teeth. “You interrupt us to bring in another would-be savior? This is going to cost you your job!”

  “But, Doctor Hartley! He’s explained his idea to me. I think it will hold water,” Miss Wade lied beautifully, smiling engagingly as she spoke. “Won’t you give him five minutes?”

  “Oh—come on in!” Hartley growled disgustedly. Slamming the door after the pair had entered, he pointed a crooked forefinger at the five men gathered about a paper-littered table.

  “Ferguson, Perrin, Massetti, Rutters,” he tolled off. “More brains than you’ve ever seen around one table in your life. And my assistant, Smedley, not so backward himself. Speak slowly and as clearly as you can. Some of the gentlemen don’t understand our language very well.”

  Saran was studying the men closely. Oddly, in this moment he was recalling Ryg’s words regarding The Other:

  “It will be the one you suspect least!” And it came to Saran that here among the men in the room was the Korjan spy. His eyes swept over them.

  Rutters, the German, was solid, straight-backed, bald, with a wide mouth and blue eyes under blond brows. Those eyes went through the young man like a bullet.

  Perrin, of France, a tall man, lolled in his chair and smiled at Saran as if to put him at his ease. There was an ashtray heaped with smouldering cigarettes at his elbow.

  Ferguson was blond and gaunt and stern. His nose, long and looming, seemed to bisect his overlong face. Massetti, the Italian scientist, was his counterpart. Short, fat, and possessed of snapping black eyes, oily hair in a mass of unruly curls, and an impersonal smile.

  Saran’s gaze finally came to rest on Smedley, the assistant. Instant dislike swept him. The man had pale eyes like chips of ice, and flaccid, unhealthy skin stretched over his bony face. That skin was the one thing that allayed Saran’s suspicion. It would be improbable that any man could make the long voyage through space without becoming as deeply burned by intense solar rays as he himself. At last Saran began to speak—to speak the things Ryg had schooled him in so long.

  “Gentlemen, there is a reason for what has overtaken Earth!” The force of his statement arrested their bored inattention at once. “Nature is tired of man. She has tired of him as she tired of the dinosaur, after putting three hundred million years of careful development on that misfitted beast. Even as she tired of the dinosaur’s successor after another twenty million years.

  “Today nature is tired of man. He has abused every tool, every weapon she has given him. Physically, he is a mechanical misfit. And, gentlemen, she has determined to kill him off and groom some other animal to take his place!”

  * * *

  A stir of interest among the scientists.

  “You speak of Nature as if she were an all-powerful ruler,” Smedley protested.

  “Isn’t she?” Saran replied, “The cleverest ruler reigns with the least ostentation. Nature obliterated the dinosaur gradually. She is annihilating us less gradually. We ourselves are doing her work by proxy.”

  Saran’s hands went out to grip the back of a chair, and he leaned forward to fix the men with his sharp glance.

  “The Third World War has not been over six months. New weapons entered that conflict—new explosives. One of those explosives filled the upper atmosphere with a gas, which intensified a certain ray to the point where it has
the power to kill the weaker forms of life—such as newborn infants.”

  Rutters snorted. “Clearly a half-developed hypothesis,” he scoffed. “Dr. Hartley has proved to our satisfaction that a germ is causing the plague. In a special ward at General Hospital this was made certain only yesterday.”

  A bleak smile curved Saran’s lips. “May I ask how?”

  Hartley savagely chewed the stem of his pipe.

  “I wouldn’t say the matter was proved as yet, Herr Rutters,” he growled. “The point is this, Mr. Saran. I filled a chamber with a heavy gas, and the delivery in one of the hospital’s maternity cases was made within it. The child is still living, twenty-two hours later.”

  He smiled quizzically at Saran. “You see why we scoff at your ‘ray’ assumption, Monsieur. We have definite proof otherwise.”

  “Proof! One case! I can explain your apparent success, Dr. Hartley. The heaviness of the gas within that chamber partially protected the newborn child. It remains to be seen how long the infant lives. And there is this—have you not noticed an increase in old-age mortality?”

  “Why—” Ferguson, the Englishman frowned. “A slight one, yes.”

  “There you are! These rays have the power to kill all of us, given time! But the weak are taken first. Eventually, we will all succumb. Unless my plan is put into practice immediately, Earth is under sentence of death!”

  Hartley asked quietly, “Just what do you propose?”

  “Enormous glass shields to cover every large city in the world. Here all must live until the atmospheric condition is remedied—if ever. Shields that we must never venture outside of—a glass cover for every metropolis!”

  “Ridiculous!” snorted Rutters. “The thing is impossible. The coefficient of expansion of the best glass would make such a thing impossible. The domes wouldn’t last a week. They’d shatter on warm days, fall to pieces on cold ones.”