Synthetic Men Page 13

  Saran shook his head at the man’s ignorance.

  “Brush up on your physics, Herr Rutters,” he advised sarcastically. “The Sjorn Theorem postulates that if magnetic rays are made to flow transversely to the grain of the glass, expansion and contraction are eliminated.”

  In the brittle silence that followed, Saran sucked his breath in noiselessly. The scientists exchanged glances in wonder, then focused their gaze on Saran. The girl stared at him curiously. The moments fled and presently, Hartley cleared his throat to speak.

  “The Sjorn Theorem, Saran? I, for one, have never heard of it! Nor of such a thing as expansionless glass! Where did you study physics?”

  Chapter III

  Domes of Death

  Panic brought the blood to Saran’s face in a swift flood. He hadn’t dreamed Earthly science could be so backward. But as he groped for words, something took place that temporarily saved him. The door opened and a girl entered.

  She compared favorably with Helen Wade for breathtaking beauty. But hers was the quiet kind, where Hartley’s secretary possessed the flamboyance of rich red lips and black hair. The new girl was blond, with steady, grave eyes and a self-confidence that even the startled Saran was able to admire. She went to Moss Hartley hurriedly.

  “The hospital, Dad!” she breathed. “Something’s happened. They want you right away!”

  A hardness settled upon Hartley’s seamed features.

  “They—they didn’t say what it is, Enid?”

  “Nothing, except that there’s been a change, I told the chauffeurs to have the cars ready.”

  Hartley dived for coat and hat. The others swarmed for the door with black desperation written in their eyes. Hartley paused on the threshold, glanced back.

  “Drive this young fellow over, will you, Enid?” he clipped. “I think he’s crazy, but he interests me. And, Miss Wade—see that no more of these so-called scientists get in, will you?”

  Saran, as he went out, saw penitence in her averted eyes, mischief in the quirk of her lips.

  A private elevator lifted the group to the seventy-fifth floor of the monstrous General Hospital. An interne led the way down the hall, to turn into a small room where a nurse waited. Saran’s glance went to the closed door beyond her, sealed with black tape. She began to strip off the tape as they entered.

  Very soon they were filing silently into a darkened room filled with dense, sour-smelling gas. A light came on, glowing like a street lamp in the fog. The nurse hurried to a glass-shielded incubator. Tears glistened in her eyes when she turned to Hartley. But no words came from her trembling lips.

  Saran was standing by Enid Hartley when she looked into the incubator. He could feel a shudder rack her body. With a muffled sob she gripped her father’s arms and buried her face against his coat, slim shoulders trembling.

  Saran looked down. On a bed of soft blankets he made out the tiny red form of a child. A child whose head had swelled to twice the size of its body, whose legs were long, spaghetti-thin tendrils and whose arms had shriveled up. The face was like a shapeless mass of pink dough. Life was in the infant—but a ghastly sort of life, born of chaos.

  Saran felt his heart twist within him. He tried to stem the waves of pity that swept over him, and failed dismally.

  The scientists were silent. This, then, had been their bid for salvation for Earth—this helpless little imbecile to which they had fastened their hope. Hartley’s voice was a husky whisper.

  “Remove the gas, nurse. This—this is horrible.”

  As light and air began to pour through the open window, he turned to Saran.

  “You were right,” he muttered. “No germ could have penetrated that antiseptic gas. Will you come back with us? I believe we are ready to listen, now. God knows you cannot fail more bitterly than I have!”

  * * *

  It was a silent pair who returned in Enid Hartley’s little coupe. The dejected girl drove listlessly, as if some vital spark had died within her. Grimly Saran reminded himself that he had no part in this tragic affair. Earth had brought disaster upon itself by its own intolerance. Earthlings had murdered his father for having revolutionary ideas. Such a race did not deserve to exist!

  But he gained only a measure of peace. Ryg had schooled him in the theory that only the strongest intellectually deserve to live. Saran’s brain could see the logic in that; his heart could not.

  Finally the girl came out of her dark reverie.

  “So you, too, have a theory,” she remarked. “Do you think it will work any better than dad’s?”

  Saran was quick to accept the challenge in her question.

  “I am sure of it,” he replied. “In my laboratory I have caused bacteria to propagate normally, something that has not taken place during all these months.”

  The girl’s eyes were dark and brooding. “It’s ghastly,” she murmured. “All these horrible little changes that serve to remind us constantly that life has ceased to exist—new life, I mean. Even bacilli are dying off. Dentists report that tooth decay has completely ceased. Undertakers say that embalming is unnecessary now.

  “Corpses remain just as perfect as though still alive. The world will be overflowing with dead in a few years. Animals, birds, rodents—they will lie right where they fall, for all time, or until squads of gravediggers bury them. Death all around us, and not a new life brought forth this year!”

  Quickly the girl stifled the hysterical crescendo of her words.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Forgive me for letting loose. If I don’t seem any too confident in this theory of yours, it’s because I’ve seen dozens, scores of plans tried, all of them to fail.”

  Saran shrugged. “I know. But you’ll pardon me, too, if I don’t seem worried by it all. You see, I happen to have faith that I can stop this plague!”

  But he would tell her no more than that. His advice was to wait until they returned to the laboratory, and see with her own eyes.

  An hour later they were all gathered in Hartley’s private laboratory, waiting while Saran gathered a few things together that he would need in his proof to the scientists. They evinced a little more respect when he addressed them for the second time.

  “I mentioned the Sjorn Theorem and expansionless glass,” he reminded casually. “Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to tell you all there is to know about these matters. The man I studied under is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived—and yet you would not know his name if I told you. But as to that glass, gentlemen. Watch!”

  Deftly he strung wires in an intricate maze involving condensers, tubes, a rheostat. They were connected to a long bar paralleling a strip of glass about two feet in length, suspended over several Bunsen burners. An electric measuring device would record the slightest expansion of the glass plate. Saran switched on the juice to the magnetic set-up, lighted the burners.

  In a few seconds, the glass was glowing pink. Smedley watched dubiously. Hartley was intent, the others torn between a desire to scoff and the fear of making fools of themselves if they did.

  And the glass remained unchanged! Not a millimeter did it expand!

  The quartz was heated almost to the melting point, but the electrical recorder was silent. Saran suddenly began to chuckle.

  “Prognosis positive,” he smiled. “I continue to demonstration Number Two. Mr. Smedley, can you find me a culture of good, lively bacteria? Proteus vulgaris will do.”

  Saran was conscious of the silence within the laboratory. Deliberately, he took his time about arranging a watch-glass of bacteria beneath a microscope. The bacilli were dormant until he added liquid. Hartley had to keep them in a semi-dry condition, or through self-division they would soon have annihilated themselves. When Saran pressed a button, a small screen projected an image of the swarming culture for all to see.

  Immediately, the rod-shaped bacteria commenced to multiply through self-division—gradually lengthening, then splitting in the middle. But where, under ordinary conditions, the popu
lation would thus have been increased, both halves of the new, struggling pair died instantly. They were too weak to withstand the barrage of deadly energy-waves Ryg’s stations created.

  * * *

  The smiling, tanned young scientist had taken a circle of blue glass from his pocket. Casually he laid it atop the watch-glass, so that the bacteria were shielded.

  Silence; the kind of dread quiet when lives are at stake. Then through the room coursed a current of shock. Rutters and Massetti slowly got to their feet, their faces white. Hartley’s pipe hit the floor with a loud crack.

  Helen Wade’s voice sheared the hush. “Doctor—they’re living!”

  There was a rush for the microscope to verify what the screen showed. One by one the scientists pressed forward to eye the living, propagating bacilli. All lifted strained, white visages to Saran. At last he spoke.

  “Convinced, gentlemen?”

  Something like worship was in Enid Hartley’s face. Tears stood in her eyes.

  “Would it do that for children?” she whispered. “Would it help the millions of future mothers to keep their babies?”

  “I don’t know why not,” Saran replied confidently. “Am I to have the chance to prove it, Dr. Hartley?”

  Hartley shoved his hands deep in his pockets.

  “How soon can you turn out enough of that glass to insulate an entire maternity ward?” he grunted.

  “As fast as you can supply me with ordinary window glass and a few special chemicals. The bluish color is sprayed on. We can have the work done by tomorrow night, if we hurry.”

  “Then what are we standing here for?” roared the elderly scientist, abruptly. “Smedley, have the glass here in an hour. Ferguson, Rutters—and the rest of you—get things ready for high-speed production. What materials will you need, Saran?”

  Saran told them. Hartley barked orders, sent the dignified men of science scurrying out like common errand boys. At last only three of them remained, Hartley and his daughter and Saran.

  “You’ll stay with us, of course,” Hartley decided curtly. “Enid will find you a room. If you need rest, you’d better get it now. We’ll be working all night and all day.”

  Saran murmured: “Thank you, Doctor. I could do with a little sleep.”

  He was on the point of following the girl from the room when the physicist called him back. Hartley was studying him intently.

  “You said your name was Saran,” he mused. “It wouldn’t have been Saunders once, would it?”

  Apprehension laid a cold stream along the younger man’s spine. He shook his head, searched Hartley’s face. For “Saunders” was the name written in many of the books he had read that were taken from the fatal space ship in which he and his father, years before, had been condemned to death.

  “I just wondered,” Hartley shrugged. “I had a very dear friend once by the name of Lawrence Saunders. Your resemblance to him is remarkable. But he’s been dead these twenty years, poor chap; he and his wife and boy. God knows what became of them, out there in space—”

  Saran’s fists were balled up hard and his lips were dry.

  “Out—in space?” he said huskily. Inside him a monotonous voice kept droning that his ruse was already detected, his usefulness to Ryg at an end.

  “A brilliant man, Saunders,” the other mused. “Yes, and a great-hearted one. He was on his way to Jupiter with his family, to accept a post among the natives there and try to wipe out the dreaded lakna epidemic. The last thing he radioed back to us was of an unknown ship scuttling them. He spoke of strange beings like jellyfish. Then his radio went dead.”

  Shrugging, Hartley turned away. “Ah, well, it was just an idea. Get your sleep, Saran.”

  But Saran did not get his sleep that night.

  Turmoil tore at his brain. Hartley was lying! But why? To confuse him? But who should want to do that—for who knew his purpose on Earth? Only—The Other. And if The Other had turned traitor—warned Hartley… Did Hartley then hope to mollify Saran’s hate with lies? But why should Hartley listen to him, knowing who he was? There was no answer, and it tortured him.

  * * *

  It occurred to him that his fears were ridiculous.

  Hartley could have basis for no such suspicions.

  But he resolved to bend every effort toward caution. Once let those glass domes be raised over Earth’s cities, as he planned, and his work was done. For, given time, the glass would do more than appeared on the surface. It would save mankind from one fate, a fate that Hartley’s work was in danger of eventually averting, but it would bring on just as certain a doom.

  Exposure to the blue light for a few months would render every man and woman on Earth sterile. And no scientist’s skill could restore the miracle of reproduction, once it was lost.

  Chapter IV

  The Second Visit

  The spring-steel tension of those next few days was never forgotten by any who lived through it. Four squirming, red-faced little beings came into the world in General Hospital’s special ward—and lived. More babies were born under Saran’s blue glass and more shields were raised. Not a child was lost in two weeks!

  A month, and the news flared across the world. An American scientist had achieved the miracle. Life had resumed in America! How was it done? How could other cities duplicate the feat?

  Saran sent the answer back with Ferguson, Perrin and Massetti. They, and the men they trained in the work, carried the legend of his wizardry far and wide. Special maternity wards went up overnight. Immense glass domes lifted from the Earth within a matter of months. Tunnels of glass linked the metropolises. Life took on a surrealistic aspect.

  A terror was born in mankind of the naked rays of the sun. Farmers tilled their fields under strange glass umbrellas. Where plant life had failed to withstand the deadly rays, they were transferred to immense greenhouses, to grow in immunity. Telephone linemen and others who must labor in the open country wore spun-glass armor. Within the mighty hemispheres that arched above the cities, an eerie blue twilight dwelt. But men and women could stand the ghastly look of each other in knowing death had been routed.

  Dentists rubbed their hands in glee. Every day saw more decayed teeth coming their way. Starving physicians admitted relief as bacterial diseases again broke out in normal amounts.

  But Saran, who knew that another two months would see them all doomed, was far from glad. Worst of all, he had fallen in love with Enid Hartley. He who had plotted the destruction of her kind, found himself longing to be her mate.

  Strange, fierce yearnings made life a hell for him. Constantly he had to remind himself of the superiority of the Korjans to these people whose joys and sorrows he now found himself sharing. And there was another who observed his vacillation.

  One night, after a drive with Enid, he returned to his room to find a neat, white card lying on the pillow. Typed on it was a cryptic command:

  “Be in the field tomorrow at midnight. Ryg is displeased.”

  Something froze inside him. In his furtive, semi-happiness with Enid, he had forgotten that the eyes of The Other were on him constantly. Staring at the card, suspicions crawled like ants through his brain.

  Who was the other spy? Rutters, who had not returned to his own country, on the excuse of wanting to study Saran’s methods further? Smedley, the sardonic one? With cold abruptness, Saran remembered the warning: “—the one you suspect least!”

  The man Saran suspected least was Moss Hartley.

  * * *

  Midnight the following night found him driving into the Tehachapi Hills, far beyond the end of the glass tunnel. He parked in the brush and walked slowly up the hill to the little hollow where Ryg had landed before. Then he saw it, silvery-white in the moonlight, like a thimble set on its base among screening bushes.

  The door was open when he reached it. Saran shook off chains of aversion and strode inside.

  Instantly, light flooded the space ship. Beyond the partition, he made out the spongy presence of the Kor
jans. Ryg’s voice burned itself into his brain.

  “You have failed us! What of your oath, Saran?”

  Disgust piled upon him. Nothing had ever nauseated him as did the gelatinous appearance of the man he had once admired. Those ghastly green orbs, floating in mid-air— His gaze fell before the hot accusation in their translucent depths.

  “I have not failed, Ryg,” he made protest. “Within another month Earth will be a planet of the sterile. Fifty or seventy-five years, and you can take possession.”

  “Bah! I told you I have done with wasting time. Earthmen are resourceful. In that time, they might find a new means of reproduction. Even as the man Hartley was trembling on the verge of discovering our energy stations.”

  The string of vituperation broke, resumed more quietly.

  “I saw strange domes of glass as we landed tonight. Is that part of your work?”

  “I had them erected to stop one plague and cause a worse one. The Earth people are ignorant of their danger. Thus they are blissfully rushing toward disaster.”

  “Rushing!” Ryg sneered. “Fifty years! I will soon remedy that. You employed the Sjorn Theorem in these domes of yours?”

  Saran nodded, wondering what was back of the question.

  Then for a while only jumbled thought-sequences entered the young Earthling’s mind, as Ryg consulted with his ministers. At last:

  “You will do as follows,” Ryg commanded. “Find the magnetic plane of the human brain. Alter the frequency of the Sjorn impulsors to correspond to this plane. Then have the power output doubled, on some pretext, in every dome you have erected.”

  Saran’s lips curled in contempt. “I thought you said the men of Earth were the barbarians. What do you call yourself, proposing such a plan? It would break down the brain cells, make a race of idiots out of them! It would mean reversion to savagery—”