Synthetic Men Page 28

  Again Sarak bludgeoned his way in, driving Rog back before him, bleeding and dazed. A sob of despair choked Rog. It was more than his life that was at stake today.

  Johann Adam's fingers were locked in the folds of his garments as he watched the struggle. He knew as well as Rog what the stakes were. And it was a heartbreaking fact for him to realize that he was powerless to help. Interference by him, even if it resulted in victory for the boy, would mean the tribe would never accept him. Only as a tribal member could he aid.

  Around the fighters a great crowd was collecting. The rest of the tribe had run up just after Sarak and Luk-no, and now they crowded in to watch the deadly combat. Their screams of hate filled the quiet forest.

  Rog fought with desperation. In strength he was a match for his bloodthirsty sire, but he lacked the years of experience behind the Old Man's clubbing. He was forced to give ground time after time, wading in with swinging bludgeon only to be brought to his knees by a clever blow over the back of the neck.

  Sweat streamed down his forehead and blinded him, mingling with blood. His ribs ached terribly from a blow that had cracked several on one side, and one leg was wrenched so it would hardly support him. But still his shoulders writhed to his efforts to give Sarak a death blow.

  Suddenly, as he backed to the very edge of the crowd, he saw a shadow rise swiftly over his head, in the black images cast on the ground. For a moment the battle with Sarak was forgotten in the more immediate danger of being clubbed from behind. He ducked.

  Something smacked into the ground at his feet, and a man, his balance lost by the blow's missing, lunged past. Luk-no stumbled over the boulder that had almost cost Rog his life. In a flash the intended victim's club was raised and brought down on his back. With a scream of pain the black-browed one went down.

  The Old Man had not been napping. As Rog's attention wavered he leaped in close and pulled his cudgel around behind him for a vicious roundhouse swipe that would crush his adversary's head. Rog's only warning was his hissing breath. He squatted down quickly, just as the stone swept over him, so close it raised the hackles on his neck.

  In the next moment Rog's chance came. Sarak lunged off balance and twisted desperately around to recover it. Rog took one deep breath ... and then he leaped.

  His club hissed through the air as he put all his force into a final effort. There was a solid crunching sound as the sharp rock connected with Sarak's skull. The Old Man went down without a sound, and he was Old Man no longer....

  In the moment's hush that fell over the group, Rog went swiftly back to Lo and Johann Adam. He stood between them and raised both arms for attention.

  "Is there any other who wishes to be ruler?" he shouted.

  There was not a sound. Luk-no crouched where he had fallen.

  A glad tide rushed up in Rog's breast. He had won! He was the Old Man now, himself, free to do as he wished, and with the power to make the tribe do what he knew was best for them. He spoke once more.

  "Then, know this—I am your ruler and you are my people. But this old man beside me is far wiser than any of us. You will follow my wishes—I will follow his. You do not know what this means now, but you will later."

  A few feet away the hapless Luk-no still crouched and awaited the death blow that was his due. Then Rog performed the first act of mercy mankind had known in many hundreds of years.

  Sharply he said to him, "Get up. I will not kill you because I do not deign to dirty my club with your blood. But if ever you interfere with me or my mate or the old one, it will go hard with you."

  Luk-no crept away, while amazement gripped the tribe. And in the eyes of the men and women Rog read complete victory.

  Johann Adam shook his wise old head, realizing what had happened. "I have known men far more cultured than you to seize the opportunity you spurned," he murmured. "Perhaps with such a start, civilization will come to a better end, this time!"

  The End

  ********************************

  Armageddon, 1948,

  by Ed Earl Repp

  Amazing Stories November 1941

  Novelette - 12099 words

  This globe deep in the earth, and

  the girl who had slept centuries

  was the only hope against the Borers

  Chapter I

  “Ready with that charge?" the call came above the slam and; rattle of machinery.

  Phil Burke, Captain of the National Guard, sat in the swinging operator's chair with his hands on the controls and his eyes on the depth gauge.

  "All set!" Page Russell, top Sergeant, sat in the swinging chair beneath him. A metal box rested on his lap, clutched tightly in sweaty, blackened hands. Sixty times in the last three days he had squirmed out the front of the machine to place the charge. But his nerves still recoiled from the touch of that box of concentrated murder.

  Three days ago they had started out from the bank of the Hudson, working under the nerve-pinching pressure of terror and determination. Seventeen miles of fresh brown mounds, zig-zagging into the woods, showed how far they had come. At the bottom of each shaft reposed a charge of explosive. Gamma rays made it impossible for a Borer to pass within three hundred yards of any charge without setting it off.

  In a great arc that had New York City for its center, other National Guardsmen and army regulars labored in similar machines. Desperation kept them battling to complete the zone of death that it was hoped would protect the nation's temporary capital from the hordes of Borers working day and night beneath the ground.

  There were severe lines, graven deep about Phil Burke's mouth and eyes, that told of a gruelling fight with fear and fatigue. The hammering of the engine pounded on his bruised nerves. Every time the gauge caught his eye, with its two needles making a flat V, he saw the grinning red mouth of a Borer.

  Borers! Two syllables that stood for slimy, gray-white hallucinations twenty feet long and as thick as logs. Bodies like jelly and teeth like steel. You could shoot those bodies to hell and still the heads and mouths crawled on as long as there was a few feet of body to push them along. The Borers were utterly blind. But their corpulent appetites guided them unerringly to every root, leaf, and shred of organic life within miles.

  The depth gauge showed forty feet. Lulled by the monotonous hammering of crankshaft and gears, Phil Burke's tired body was half asleep. Suddenly the mine layer shuddered and stopped its swift descent. The reamers' deep grinding merged into a shrill whine. Higher, shriller, that whine went until Page Russell's scream could scarcely be heard:

  "For God's sake, shut it off! It's driving me crazy!"

  The dropping wail of steel blades blunting themselves on something incredibly tough. Then silence; and Phil's rueful chuckle.

  "Sorry! That one crept up on me. What the devil's happened?"

  Page carefully placed the explosive on a rack and dropped beside the machinery. His homely features, long and unshaven, pinched as he stared at the main drive shaft.

  "I thought we'd busted a shaft and the engine was running wild," he muttered. "But the thing's solid. We've struck something harder than the reamer. Or else we've pushed into a hole where the blades are biting air."

  Phil was frowning at the instrument panel, trying to find a solution there. A shadow, the forerunner of a wonder that was soon to leave him stunned, passed over his face. With greasy fingers he rubbed at square, blue jowls.

  "Metal doesn't come harder than those reamers," he grunted. "We've struck a cave of some sort."

  Then both men were staring at each other in a sudden fear. "A swarm of Borers might have left such a hole!" was the thought that leaped into their minds. "And if they did, they've already broken through our lines—"

  Phil started the motors again without a word. He backed the mine layer up a few feet. Then he cut the switch. Reaching for a flashlight, he swung onto the ladder.

  "Let's have a look," was all he said.

  Page opened the small door. Both stuck their heads through as Phil's
hand guided the torch beam about. What they saw was a round plate of bronze at the bottom of the hole the mine layer had dug. Where the whirling blades had struck it, the metal held a brilliant lustre. But in no place had it been as much as scratched.

  Phil dropped his long legs through the door.

  "If that's bronze," he gritted, "we d better get out the whetstone and sharpen our cutters. Uraniumite will cut bronze like cheese, and not lose the feather edge."

  Page lowered himself and both men bent over the shining metal. All the reamers had done was to burnish it and lose some of their own sharpness. Digging with his hands, Phil found that they had merely uncovered a small part of a slightly convex dome. Page stamped on it with a hard leather heel. The solid thump that resulted deepened Phil Burke's frown.

  "If this has anything to do with the Borer, I want to know about it," he stated. "We'll dig a transverse shaft and get room to work in. Then we'll see what we've found. . ."

  Then went back to work with the grimness of men fearing what they may find. Borers! The nickname, the horrible picture of them, had dwelt in Phil Burke's mind for months.

  Out of the sky they had come, the night of the full moon. Between dusk and daybreak, seven months ago, a swarm of small, worm-like creatures, encased in cysts, pattered down upon Earth. Astronomers reported seeing them belch from the craters of Luna.

  Seventy-two hours later, all over the globe, men and women were tromping out snake-sized wrigglers. On their roofs, in cellars, in the lobbies of hotels, in hospitals. . . With a stab of revulsion, Phil remembered the Borer he had killed in his apartment. The stench of the spilled yellow blood—!

  At first it had been a sort of joke. Then it was discovered that the millions of steel-jawed creatures were growing at the rate of a foot a day! Soon they attained their maturity—twenty feet. Everywhere they went, they carried their voracious appetites and gnashing, steel jaws.

  Over-populated Europe, hardest hit, massed for battle. Millions of men poured out to meet them before the great cities. That was when they learned that guns were useless. Each individual Borer had to be chopped to bits before it was stopped.

  Like a sea of maggots they crawled on, covering whole plains, entire cities, clogging rivers. Great liners sank in their slips by the very weight of the Borers rooting in them.

  The European nations, moving with that pig-headed pseudo-efficiency called totalitarianism, blundered this way and that. Vainglorious self-seeking prevented efficient methods. For a while it seemed the sheer weight of luckless soldiers flung against the wriggling hordes might stop them. Then the worms went underground. After that—

  Phil would retain to his death-bed the memory of a thousand headlines. "London Crumbles, Prey to Borers!" "Paris, Moscow, Rome, Fall!" The creatures devoured whole cities of wooden structures in a night. Concrete skyscrapers they undermined with their burrows and brought crashing down. Then they sifted the ruins for bits of wood or human flesh.

  America was having her struggles too. Here and there across the continent, hordes of Borers swept over towns and cities. An isolated swarm sprang up west of Annapolis. In twenty-four hours the Borers were closing in on Washington. Infantry and mechanized units failed to stop the gray, squirming tide. President Adams, leaving by plane, announced the removal of the capital to New York City for the duration of the crisis. But before Adams reached New York, his plane crashed.

  After that, America had more to fear than the menace of the Borers. Adams' death left the rift wide for the wedge of dictatorship. It was rumored that sabotage had caused he wrecking of his plane. For years, Fifth Columnists had been preparing to strike. Overnight they moved. General Aubyn, highest-ranking army official, declared the country under martial law. As easily as that it was a fait accompli. Aubyn, taking orders from Berlin the past ten years, surrounded himself with a ministry of iron-fisted zealots and moved to unite the nation under him by the simple act of wiping out the Borers.

  But it was not so easy. To men like Phil Burke and Page Russell, his blind rushes this way and that were useless moves that meant eventual ruin. To say so, meant the firing squad. The army, the National Guard, the police forces, were deeply veined with Aubyn loyalists. To co-operate with the new regime was the only hope of bringing a return to sanity.

  Across the water, events plowed toward a finish. In just four months—four months!—Europe and Asia were totally disorganized! Reports came no longer from the dying continent. Flyers told of seeing little bands of soldiers here and there, surrounded by Borers. Of glimpsing packs of madmen vying with the wild dogs for bits of flesh to eat. Europe was a vast graveyard, a dark land where civilization was dead.

  Two hours of work and Phil Burke and Page Russell were standing on the rim of the great hole they had dug, staring down at a dull metal dome about seventy-five feet in diameter.

  "Whatever it is, it wasn't made by a Borer," Phil growled. "Gives me the cold shudders to look at it. It looks so—so ancient. Yet, it's the toughest metal ever poured. It's one thing even the Borers' jaws won't dent."

  Page was pointing. "Looks like there might be an opening there. Just above that square contraption we uncovered."

  They hurried down one of the long scoops the mine layer had left. Phil had a box of tools under his arm. Page wiped dust from the slick surface of the dome and exposed a faint line, .hardly more noticeable than a crack on a white china plate. The crack enclosed a large square. But Phil's chisel failed to win the slightest purchase.

  Page, scratching with a forefinger, cleaned the packed dirt from the top of the square box welded to the side of the dome, just below the door. Five bronze knobs were fixed to the top of the box. Each had its own groove; each could be moved up and down the groove at will.

  "Get a load of this!" he nudged his superior. "A prehistoric combination lock! You know, I've got a hunch that if we just knew where to set these knobs, that door would open by itself."

  "Professor, you amaze me!" Phil exclaimed. "But the point is, we don't know where to set them. An acetylene torch seems to be indicated. Suppose you run along and get the portable outfit out of the mine layer."

  Page turned and ran up the incline, long and lanky in his brown mechanic's coveralls. Phil pushed the knobs around testing. From some dusty archive of his mind he recollected that the ancients were supposed to be great geometricians. By way of testing, he arranged the knobs into an equilateral triangle.

  Immediately, a swift force tore the central knob from his grasp and brought it back to the bottom of the box. The rest of the knobs automatically fell into line! Phil's eyes goggled.

  In the next moment he whirled. The door was standing open!

  Page Russell heard his delighted yell as he emerged from the machine. He looked over the brink to see Phil standing in the doorway, motioning to him. There was a soft light behind him, and Page thought he saw stairs curving away into the earth. He dropped the acetylene tank and started to run, as Phil moved inside. At that instant it happened.

  CHAPTER II

  The Sleeper

  Phil turned back with a cry. He was within a few feet of the door when it thundered shut. The grind of machinery had forewarned him. But the door, leaping from a slot in the floor, cut him off short of his goal. For a moment he ran his hands frantically over the wall at each side of the door. Then panic touched him with cold fingers. There was no knob, no button. He was locked in.

  A soft light filled the place. Phil pocketed his torch and searched intently for a lock of some sort. He forced himself to think clearly. Somewhere, there had to be a way.

  The dome was utterly soundless. Phil's ears ached with listening for Page's voice. He heard nothing, though he pressed his ear against the cold metal.

  Suddenly that metal was no longer cold. It was hot—white hot! Phil clapped a hand to his ear and jumped back.

  "What the hell!"

  A small spot just at the edge of the door glowed with heat. Phil laughed shakily. The acetylene torch! Of course! Page was cutting
through to him!

  But Page didn't cut through, though he waited an hour. The patch of sizzling heat traced itself all over the door, seeking a softer spot. Finally it ceased. Phil's long jaws showed a line of white skin. The tank was empty. Page had done all he could for him.

  Phil Burke did the most serious thinking of his twenty-nine years. A picture popped up in his mind of a skeleton, lying stretched out on the floor with its clawing fingers two inches short of the food and water beyond the wall. Right then he knew he must do something or go mad with terror.

  Forcing a pseudo-nonchalance, he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked about his prison.

  "Not bad!" The exclamation came involuntarily from his lips after a moment's scrutiny.

  Ancient or ultra-modern, the builders of this place had been supreme craftsmen. Though walls, floor, and ceiling were of metal, not a weld showed anywhere. Light came from some indirect source. In the center of the floor, a magnificent staircase of inlaid colored plastics wound down into the heart of the structure.

  Phil approached the balustrade and leaned over. He looked far, far down, into blackness. Strips of light at intervals told of other floors. He counted eight. The echoes of his own footfalls followed him chuckingly as he began to descend.

  Where the stairway gave its first glimpse of the second floor, as the circular staircase of a lighthouse gives a lofty view of each level, Phil's feet dragged to a stop. The floor spread fifty feet in every direction. Every square foot of it was filled with wonders. Beyond the far walls, through open doors, he glimpsed other galleries.

  Phil's first notion was that it was like the toy section of a department store. Showcases were crowded with exquisite miniatures. Display tables supported beautifully arranged exhibits. One section of the floor was laid out like a miniature landing field. A score of small ships were lined up for a take-off.