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Wandl the Invader (version 2)

<h2>4</h2> "But see here," I said, "did they mention the Martian, Molo, at all?" "They were discussing Molo before you arrived," Grantline told us. We had drawn back from the doorway. The conference, with the dead thing removed, was proceeding. Snap and I had momentarily forgotten Anita and Venza; but now we were in a panic to get back to the Red Spark. "But you can't go," said Grantline. "Brayley ordered you here. He'll want to see you in a moment." "Well, why doesn't he see us now?" Snap protested. "I'm not going to cool myself off sitting here." "Oh yes, you are." Grantline sent word to Brayley that we were here. In a moment the answer came. We were to wait a short time; he would want to see us. We swiftly told Grantline what had happened at the Red Spark, and found that already he knew. Francis had relayed it to the conference, and Halsey was in constant communication with the officials here. "Then what is happening?" I demanded. "Where are the girls? Has Halsey heard from them?" Again Grantline went to a nearby room. "Anita sent a message," he said, when he returned. "They are with Molo. Halsey is ordering a squad of men to be ready." Grantline told us what had been happening in the Red Spark. Anita and Venza, simulating drunkenness with a skill for acting which I knew both of them possessed, had joined Molo's party. Perhaps if Meka had been there she would have seen through them. But Molo did not. And they have since told me that the Martian himself was far from sober, although he was probably not aware of it. He yielded to their demands to leave the restaurant with him. He wanted, as we know, to leave unobtrusively; and Venza threatened a scene unless she could go. He took them, leaving openly in a public fare-car. Doubtless[30] he at first intended to de-rail them somewhere, but they convinced him that he was not being followed. Twice he used his detector, and Anita and Halsey were clever enough to throw off their rays in time to avoid it. Then Halsey lost connection with the fleeing car, and after that Molo changed his mind about ditching the girls. "But where are they now?" I demanded. "You," said Grantline sternly, "are out of it. Do you think that Halsey, under Brayley's orders, will neglect any chance to find out where Molo is hiding? Something is about to happen. This conference is wrestling with it. In Grebhar and Ferrok-Shahn they're striving to find out what it is. Something impending now. Helios are pouring in here from Venus and Mars. They're mobilizing their spaceships, just as we are." Grantline at last was letting out all his apprehensions on us, with this burst. "Halsey didn't tell you that the entire resources of his organization are out upon this thing tonight. Here at this conclave there's a room of information-sorters. That's just where I came from a moment ago. Every country on our Earth is making ready—for what, nobody knows! "He's had two fragmentary calls from Anita. He has a hundred men ready to rush to their aid, and to capture Molo's lair. He expects another message from Anita any moment. This conference here knows every movement that is being made, within ten or twenty seconds of its making. Perhaps upon Anita and Venza the whole outcome of this thing may hang." We had no answer to that. "Do you know who Molo is? He's an interplanetary pirate; his ship is the Star-Streak." "Good Lord!" We had heard of him. For five years past, a gray spaceship, with a base supposedly hidden in the Polar deserts of Mars, had been terrorizing interplanetary shipping. "They think," Grantline went on, "that Molo was cruising with his pirate ship. He has, as you know, a band of criminals drawn from all the three worlds. There are about fifty of them, commanded by his sister and himself. We think that Molo encountered the three ships which that new planet sent out. The Star-Streak was captured, perhaps destroyed. Molo and his band, joined with this new enemy, to save themselves, and because they have been promised rewards."[31] "But why should these brains want their help?" Snap demanded. "Wouldn't you say it was because, in Ferrok-Shahn, Grebhar and here in Greater New York, simultaneously tonight, something has to be accomplished, something the brains themselves could not do? Molo and his band know all three cities. How they landed here in Greater New York nobody knows; the enemy spaceship is 200,000 miles out. Obviously they came from it, landed secretly with some smaller ship somewhere on Earth and made their way here." A buzzer sounded beside us. A voice commanded: "Grantline, bring Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean to room six at once." <hr style='width: 45%;' /> In room six we stood before the War Secretary, who had arrived there a moment ahead of us. "Ah, Haljan and Dean. I'm glad to see you." He was still white and shaken. Beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He mopped them off. "I've just had a rather terrible experience." He did not suggest that we sit down. He went on crisply: "Grantline no doubt has told you of what's going on. Disturbing, terrifying. Haljan, we have a ship being rushed into commission tonight. You know her, the Cometara." "I know her," I said. "Quite so. She is taking off as soon as we can ready her. She will carry about fifty men. Grantline is in charge of the armament and men. You, Dean, we want to handle her radio-helio." "Right," said Snap. "And you, Haljan, we can think of no one better to navigate her." He waved away my appreciation. "Within a brief time we shall have thirty such ships in space. Mars and Venus also are mobilizing." He stood up. "We feel, Haljan, that if anyone can handle the Cometara with skill enough to combat this lurking enemy, it will be you." "I'll do my best, sir." "We know that. The ship is leaving from the Tappan Inter[32]planetary Stage shortly after dawn. When have you and Dean last slept?" "Last night," we both said. "Quite so. Then you need sleep now. I want you to go at once to the Tappan Fieldhouse. The commander there will make you comfortable. Eat, and sleep if you can. We want you in good shape. You're to keep out of this night's activities here in the city; you understand?" "Yes sir." An orderly was approaching behind Brayley. "I'll be back in a moment, Rollins." He shook hands with us. "I may not see you again before it's over. Good luck, lads. Grantline, they need you for a moment in the hall; something about electronic space weapons, further equipment for the Cometara. Then you'd better go to Tappan House too, and get some sleep." We were dismissed. Snap and I regarded each other hesitantly. I said impulsively, "Mr. Brayley, Detective-Colonel Halsey is using two girls." "Yes, we're watching that, Haljan." "They're the girls we're to marry," I added. "May we communicate with Colonel Halsey?" "Yes. Call him from here." He smiled wanly. "But keep out of it; we need you at dawn." The Tappan departure-stage was only a few miles up the Hudson; we could get there in half an hour. It was now nearly trinight, halfway between midnight and dawn. I had my portable audiphone and got Halsey at once. "You Gregg?" "Yes. They're through with us at the Conclave. Where is Anita?" "We heard from her twice. I'm expecting...." We could hear someone interrupting him. Then he came back. "Gregg? Molo took them somewhere. I didn't dare fling after them. He had his detector going, and Anita warned me not to try it. She had to stop connection herself. God knows how she was able to whisper to me at all." His voice, like Brayley's, had the ring of a man strained to the breaking point. I could appreciate how Halsey must feel, forced to remain at his desk with its encircling banks of instruments; holding all the network of his farflung activities[33] centralized; his decisions, his commands in a hundred places almost simultaneously, while his body sat there inactive. "Gregg, the girls must have arrived at Molo's place by now. If only they know where they are! I have lookouts throughout the city with intricate and complete connecting equipment. Gregg, I must disconnect." "Colonel, give me Anita's frequency. Maybe Snap or I can pick up the message." He named the oscillating frequency, then disconnected. "Try that frequency," Snap suggested. "We've got to do something." The door-slide opened suddenly and an orderly appeared. "Haljan?" "Get the hell away," roared Snap. "We've had our orders; we don't want any from you." "Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean are paged on the mirrors." Someone in the city wanted us; our names were appearing on the various mirror-grids publicly displayed throughout the city in the hope that we would answer. "That's different," said Snap. "Answer it for us, that's a good fellow. We're busy." "It must be important," the orderly insisted. "The caller registered a fee at the Search Bureau; that's how they located you here. He paid the highest fee to search you. An emergency call." It was against the law to invoke the services of the Search Bureau unless based upon actual impending danger. "We'll take it," I said. "Come with me." He turned to the left and down the corridor. We hastened with him to a corridor cubby. Upon the audiphone there I was at once connected with a voice, and an anxious man's face with a two-day growth upon it. "Haljan! Thank God you answered. This is Dud Ardley. Me and Shac are here. Listen, this is the lower cellar corridor, Lateral 3, under Broadway. Me and Shac just have seen your girls down here." News of Anita and Venza! I could see in the mirror-image, behind Dud's head the outlines of the little public cubby from which he was calling. He and his brother, on some illicit errand of their own in East Side lower Manhattan, had[34] seen figures alighting from a fare-car. They had caught a glimpse of the faces of Anita and Venza. The girls were hooded and cloaked; a hooded man was with them. The fare-car quickly rolled away, and the hooded figures, suddenly becoming invisible within their magnetic cloaks, had vanished. "S'elp me, we couldn't do nothin'. You know we take no chances with the police by carryin' cylinders. So I paged you in a hurry." "Dud, that's damn nice of you. Where are you now? Tell me again." The Ardleys, knowing nothing of the events of this night, supposed that the girls were being abducted, and decided I should be informed. "Damn right, Dud. We'll come at once. You two wait for us?" "Sure. If you got instruments, maybe we can track 'em. It wasn't a quarter of a mile from here, over toward the river. Plenty of rotten dumps down there." "Wait for us, Dud. We'll come in a rush." I slammed shut the audiphone. Snap, beside me, had heard it all. He shoved the astonished orderly out of the way. "What's the nearest exit-route out of here?" "To the city roof, sir. Up this incline." We dashed up the spiral incline, through a low exit-port, and were in the starlight of the city roof. <hr style='width: 45%;' /> "Connect it, Gregg! You can't tell; her message might come over any minute." I tuned my coils to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halsey had told us Anita's transmitter was sending. "Anything, Gregg?" "No. Dead channel." The air, in Anita's channel, was bafflingly silent. We had been challenged by a roof-guard when we appeared from the upper port of the Conclave Hall; the city roof was not open to public traffic. But with our identifications, he found us a single-seat hand-tram, and started us southward on the deserted route. It was a cloudless night, with stars like thickly-strewn dia[35]monds on purple velvet. The city roof lay glistening in the starlight. In my great-grandfather's time there had been no roof here; the open city was exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcades and overhead viaducts, cross balconies and catwalks which spanned the canyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread, now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a great rumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of the roof was of opaque alumite, dark patches, alternating with the great glassite panes which in places admitted the daylight. Our little tram sped along southward, wending its way over the terraces. Save for the guards and lookouts in their occasional cubbies, and the air-traffic directors in their towers, we were alone up here. The roof was tangled with air-pipes, line-wire conduits, aerials, arterial systems of the ventilating and lighting devices. As far as one could see the ventilators stood fronting the night breeze like listening ears. There were water tanks, great cross-bulkheads and flumes to handle the rain and snow. A few traffic towers maintained order in the overhead air-lanes. Their beacons shot up into the sky when the passing lights marked the thinly-strewn trinight traffic. We were stopped at intervals, but in each case were passed promptly. "Nothing yet, Gregg?" "No." Anita's channel remained empty. It was, I suppose, no more than ten minutes during which we sped south along the grotesque maze of the roof; but to us it was an eternity. If only some message would come! "I'll pull up here." "Yes." I gathered up my little audiphone, thrust it under my dark flowing cloak. If only our cloaks were magnetic! We leaped from our car. "In a rush, Haljan?" asked a guard. "That's us. Orders from Mr. Brayley." We left him and plunged into a descending automatic lift. A drop of a thousand feet; we shot downward past all the deserted levels, past the ground-level, the undersurface transportation lanes, the sub-river tubes, the sub-cellar, down to the very bottom of the city.[36] "Come on, Gregg. Two segments from here." We advanced at a run. At this hour of night, hardly a pedestrian was in evidence. It was an arched vaulted corridor, almost a tunnel, dimly blue-lit with short lengths of fluorescent tubes at intervals on the ceiling. For all the vaunted mechanisms of our time, the air here was heavy and fetid. Moisture dripped from the concrete roof. It lay on the metal pavement of the ground; the smell of it was dank, tomb-like. There were frequent cross-tunnels. We turned eastward into one of them. For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars of the giant buildings overhead. We passed a place where the tunnel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerage and wire-pipes lay like tangled pythons on its floor. Half across it, by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group of repairmen were working. We passed them, headed in to where the tunnel narrowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances to underground dwellings. It was a rabbit warren from here to the river, haunted by criminals and by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight for weeks at a time. The giant voices of the city hardly carried down here, so that an oppressive silence hung upon everything. "That next crossing, Gregg. They said they'd wait for us there." Occasional escalators led upward. In advance of us was a narrow intersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of the subterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark. "Easy, Snap. Not so fast." I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We had passed a small lighted audiphone cubby, evidently the one from which Dud and Shac had paged us. They should have been here waiting; but there was nothing but the empty, gloomy tunnels. "Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me; we drew our cloaks around us and waited in a shadowed recess. Down a side incline, a segment behind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up at an arcade entrance. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his cases of food, locked the panel[37] after him; and in a moment he and his truck were gone up the incline. We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan near at hand; then abruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two dark figures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow where the mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnel wall. We bent over the figures of two men. They lay together, one half upon the other, black-garbed figures with white, staring faces. One twitched a little and then lay still. They were Shac and Dud Ardley. "Murdered, Gregg! Good Lord!" Both were dead, but we could see no marks on either of them. I found my wits. "Snap, we can't stand like this wholly visible." I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnel intersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap! Run!" Under the curving vacuum tube a little further along, we found shelter. Snap murmured: "The girls went past here. But which way, Gregg?" As though I knew! I felt at that moment, under the shirt against my skin, the anode of my audiphone tingling. A receiving signal! In the gloom, I could see Snap's white face as he watched me bring it out. We heard a tiny microphonic voice, Anita's voice. "Colonel Halsey. Yes I have the location. Lafayette 4—East corridor, lowest level. A descending entrance. Don't you speak again; I've only a minute! Venza safe—but send help. Something we don't understand—a strange mechanism here." Then Halsey's interrupting voice. "Anita, escape! You and Venza!" "We can't. They've got us!" "I'm sending men. They'll be there in ten minutes." "Ten minutes will be too late. Molo is...." It seemed that we heard her scream; then the waves blurred and died.[38] Lafayette 4—East corridor, lowest level. "Snap, that's here! A descending entrance." We stood back against the great curving side of the postal vacuum tube. Within it I heard the hiss and clank as a mail cylinder flashed past. Halsey's secret orders must be going out now. His men nearest this place would come in a rush. But Anita said that would be too late. Snap and I were frantically searching. Somewhere here was an entrance to Molo's lair. It seemed in the silence that Anita's scream was still ringing in my ears. Had it been entirely from the instrument, or were we so close that we had heard its distant echoes? "Gregg, help me." Snap was tugging at a horizontal door-slide, like a trap in the tunnel floor, partly under the vacuum tube. "Stuck!" he gasped. It yielded with our efforts. It slid aside. Steps led downward into blackness. We plunged in, caution gone from us. The steps went down some twenty feet; we were in another smaller corridor. It was vaguely lighted by a glow from somewhere, and as my pupils expanded, I could see this was a shabby alley, opening ahead into a winding passage with the slide-port above us like its back gate. A warren of cubbies was here, a little sequestered segment of disreputable dwellings. We stood peering, listening. "Shall I try the eavesdropper, Gregg?" "Yes. No, wait!" I thought I heard distant sounds. "Voices, Snap. Listen." More than voices. A thud: footsteps running. A commotion, back in this warren, within a hundred feet of us. "This way," I murmured. We plunged into a black gash. There was a glow of light, a glassite pane in a house wall nearby. The commotion was louder, and under it now we heard a vague humming: something electrical. It was an indescribably weird sound, like nothing I had ever heard before. Snap clutched at me. "In here, but where is the accursed door?" There was a glassite pane, but we could find no door. In our hands we held small electronic bolt-cylinders, short-range weapons. The hum and hissing was louder. It seemed to throb[39] within us, as though vibration were communicating to every fiber of our bodies. Light was streaming through the glassite pane, and we glimpsed the interior of the room. The light now came from a strange mechanism set in the center of the metal cubby. I caught only an instant's glimpse of it, a round thing of coils and wires. The metal floor of the room was cut away, exposing the gray rock of Manhattan Island. And against the rock, in a ten-foot circle, a series of discs were contacted, with wires leading from them to the central coils. The whole was glowing with opalescent light. It was dazzling, blinding. Within in it the goggled figure of Molo was moving, adjusting the contacts. He stooped. He straightened, drew back from the light. Only an instant's glimpse, but we saw the girls, crouching with black bandages on their eyes. Meka, goggled like her brother, was holding them. A tall shape carrying a round black box darted through the light and ran. Molo leaped for the girls; the hum had mounted to a wild electrical scream. Molo flung his sister back out of the light. They all vanished. There was nothing but the light, and the mounting dynamic scream. Beside me, Snap was pounding on the glassite panel. I joined him. Everything was dreamlike, blurring as though unconsciousness was upon me. Where was Snap? Gone? Then I saw him nearby. He had found a door, but it wouldn't yield. I saw his arm go up in a gesture to me. He ran; I found myself running after him, but I stumbled and fell. Then over me the scream burst into a great roar of sound. It seemed so intense, so gigantic a sound that it must ring around the world. And the light burst with an exploding puff. The black metal cubby walls seemed to melt like phantoms in a dream. A titan's blowtorch, the opalescent light shot upward, a circular ten-foot beam, eating its way through all the city levels as though they were paper, up through the city roof. Molo's cubby was gone. His mechanism was eaten by the light and destroyed. There was only this motionless, upstanding beam, contacted here with the Earth, streaming like an opalescent sword into the starry sky.[40] <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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