Death Quotient and Other Stories

Originally published in Super Science Stories, April 1949.

Into the hearts of warring nations came Martin Rhode’s voice, heard on every radio in the world: “You must lay down your weapons, live out your last days in peace. Because — before the week is out, this planet will be no more!”

Chapter One Foray

Second Lieutenant Martin Rhode stood well back from the cave mouth and watched the slow dusk settle over the Chemung valley. By force of habit, he kept his hand cupped around the glow of his cigarette, though there was no chance that it could be seen from aloft.

Far down the slanting throat of the cave a shaft of light glowed, and Rhode turned, angrily warned the man who had carelessly parted the blackout curtains.

“Sorry, Martin,” the man said as he came up. Martin recognized the voice of Guy Deressa, the civilian responsible for convoy loading.

They stood together, looking toward the silver-grey shape of the river a quarter-mile away.

“Anything new?” Martin asked Deressa.

“Same old picture. Enemy patrols penetrated our lines at several points during last night. Main lines still static. Our rockets were mostly intercepted, but a few got through and did unknown damage to enemy shore installations. As usual, the camera rocket failed to get through interception.”

Martin yawned. “This was the ‘twenty-minute’ war,” he said.

There was no mirth in Guy Deressa’s answering laugh. “Twenty minutes or twenty years. Somewhere in between. Are you going to see Alice this trip?”

“If she can get away from the station hospital. But only for a few minutes. We’ll have to turn around, and get back here before daylight. How many vehicles? They told me there’d be twenty.”

“Only eighteen could pass inspection. The load is small arms and small arms ammunition. High-velocity stuff.”

There was a lean, dark alertness about Martin Rhode. During the three long years of invasion, he had learned to relax in his idle moments. He had learned how to seek cover, how to kill, how to harden himself to the death of those who were close to him.

The atomic bomb had proven to be an almost perfect weapon during the first two weeks of the war. Millions had died. But human courage and resource had rendered obsolete the vast, white flare, the mushroom cloud.

In the first weeks of war, every center of industrial production in the United States had been wiped out, along with an estimated forty-five million people. But from the secret launching stations that were undamaged, the retaliatory rockets had smashed the vast resources of the potential invader.

There followed a lull of almost a year, while each participant licked wounds, decentralized, made a national inventory of tools and resources, and established new production facilities in deep places in the earth.

Having suffered the least damage, the invader was able to equip a fleet and, after almost crippling losses, establish a beachhead on the New England coast. Six months later the expanded beachhead reached to within eighteen miles of where the city of Albany had once stood. It reached south to Atlantic City, and north to the eastern shore of Hudson Bay.

And for a year and a half the lines had remained practically static. It was vicious war, without principle, without mercy. Due to the decentralization of facilities and the use of vast underground defensive networks, the usefulness of the atomic bomb had become much like that of a sledge hammer for driving a tack. In the Second World War, no sane artillery commander would have tried to kill a single man on a distant hill by the use of a 240 mm. howitzer.

The parallel of trying to smash a small outpost with an atomic bomb was a close one. The production of each bomb was a serious drain on the resources of the weakened nations. There had been a return to guided missiles with high-explosive warheads. A dead-center hit with such a rocket would do as much damage to the personnel involved as would the far greater and more wasteful power of the atom.

The nations of the world had, for all practical purposes, given up the symbols of independent nations. There were merely “we” and “they.”

The invader had a bridgehead of equivalent size in Brazil, and the third focus of combat was along the Salween River, where an industrialized India had joined forces with Burma and Siam to halt the invader in the heart of the malarial country.

For a year and a half it had been a war of knife and pistol and bare hands. As the rockets became more accurate, so did the interceptor rockets. As the powerful vortex stations increased the fury and height of their invisible aimed cyclones, the crewed bombers flew ever higher. As pestilence struck, the inoculations became more effective, and bacteria distribution had been abandoned as an effective weapon.

In the end, both sides had learned that the weapon which would win would be brave men, armed with portable weapons, who could kill other brave men at close quarters.

Martin Rhode lifted the cigarette to his lips with an awkward gesture. Each week the stiffened shoulder became more limber. Soon, he knew, he would be returned from detached service to his original unit, and would once more head up his trained and experienced patrol on their nightly forays into invader territory. As he thought of it, fear was a cold, wet substance in his guts. Combat had been a hell of a lot different than he had expected. He had been eleven years old when he saw the movies of the Jap surrender in Tokyo Bay. At that time he had lived in a dream world where he was a staunch Marine running cursing up some sandy beach, hurling grenades, thrusting with the bayonet.

He mashed the cigarette out against the rock wall of the cave, followed Guy in through the blackout curtains. Eighteen huge trucks, loaded, with the tarps tied down, stood nose to tail on the quasi-level floor of the cave. The drivers stood in a small group, laughing and talking.

Since the roads had been pretty well smashed, the trucks were semi-tracked vehicles with drive on the front wheels as well, diesel-powered, weighing twelve tons empty.

“Okay,” Martin shouted. “Ready to Roll.”

The group split up and the men sauntered to their trucks, clambered up into the high cabs. The driver of the lead truck was already behind the wheel, wearing a black blindfold so that his night vision would be at peak as soon as they rolled out the tunnel entrance.

On handy brackets in each cab were the lightweight Galton guns, with their full drum load of two thousand of the tiny twelve-caliber slugs, ready to fire at muzzle velocity of 6000 feet per second, a cycle of fire of 1500. No man had ever survived who had been hit in any part of his body by a Galton slug within a half-mile range. The impact of the slug produced hydrostatic shot, exploding the heart. Very little talent was needed to fire a Galton gun effectively, as the drop was only an inch and a half at six hundred yards.

The massive trucks were loaded with more Galtons and tremendous loads of ammunition.

When they were ready, the tunnel lights snapped out. The driver of the lead truck took off his blindfold and as the curtains drew back, they could see ahead the pale oval of the tunnel entrance.

The starters whined and the motors caught, roared. The lead truck lurched into motion, crawling out through the tunnel entrance, turning left to reach the junction of what had once been Route 17. The destination was near the relatively undamaged town of Oneonta, a division supply point some nine miles beyond the town where camouflaged elevators would take the huge trucks, one at a time, down to the third level for unloading. Division vehicles would distribute the supplies from there.

The invader bomb that had smashed Binghampton had been exploded at a height of nine hundred feet. The radiation from the jumbled debris had long since dropped below the danger point. The vast patch of vitrified earth made maximum night speed possible.

As the hours stretched out, Martin Rhode slouched in the seat and thought of Alice. He remembered how wan and tired she had been the last time he had seen her. Her resistance was low, and in a forward area, she was in more danger than he. He found himself wishing that the woman’s draft had qualified her for factory work in some safe place far behind the lines, rather than in a forward hospital where there was constant danger of being overrun by an enemy patrol.

She too, had seen a lot of death. The moments they had together were precious beyond description, and his heart ached when he thought of the way her slim shoulders trembled when his arms were tight around her. The world was giving the two of them a damn poor break. The war was sapping their youth. Should she die, there would be little point in any of the rest of it. He knew that she felt the same way too.

Brogan had felt that way. Brogan and his girl. They had stolen supplies and a light plane and headed for the Canadian wilds. He smiled wryly in the darkness. Brogan had picked what he thought was wild and empty country, and had landed directly above one of the biggest synthetic food plants in the country.

The drumhead trial had lasted forty minutes. They had shot Brogan’s wife first. Then him. Desertion in time of war.

He felt sleepy, but knew he should remain alert. If the invader’s aircraft, so high as to be invisible and almost inaudible, appeared over them, only the delicate radar would give them warning.

When it happened the driver, startled, braked the truck too fast and the jagged sound of crashes from the rear told that he had piled up the convoy. Martin Rhode was hurled, cursing, against the windshield.

All Martin could think of was a perfectly straight bolt of lightning, thicker than any lightning flash he had ever seen, driving straight down from the cloudless heavens to bury itself in the earth with a thick, chunking noise that seemed to shake the road.

“Sorry, sir,” the driver said in a high nervous voice. “I was startled and I couldn’t—”

“It’s done now,” he said shortly. He climbed down to take a look. All the other drivers were out of their trucks, looking over the damage.

Of the eighteen trucks, only three were so disabled as to be unable to continue. The driver of one of the disabled trucks was a competent-looking sergeant. Martin said, “Get in the lead truck, sergeant. You know the destination. Take the trucks on through. Whatever that thing was, it seems to have made a hell of a hole up ahead. I’m going to stay and find out what it is. Give that hole a wide circle. You two men, you’ll stay with me. Pick us up on your way back, sergeant.”

It took ten minutes to get the trucks in running condition untangled from the disabled trucks. The two drivers stood near Martin Rhode and watched the convoy lumber off, turning sharply across country to avoid the huge hole made by whatever it was that had flashed down out of the night sky. When he shut his eyes, Martin could still see the after-image of the blue-white line drawn from sky to earth.

The two men who had remained behind were obviously nervous.

Martin tested his flashlight against the palm of his hand, said, “You two men stay well back while I take a look. Go on back to that crest and get on the far side of it so that if it should blow up, some kind of a report will get back. I’ll take a hand set and tell you what I see.”

The starlight was bright enough to show him the dimensions of the vast hole. He gasped as he saw it, estimating its diameter at a hundred and eighty feet. The aged concrete of the highway had been sliced as cleanly as though by a sharp knife.

He said, “The hole seems to be close to two hundred feet in diameter, and it is very regular. Seems to be made by a cylindrical object much larger than any rocket known to be in use. I’m approaching it on the concrete. Now I’m on my stomach looking down over the edge. I’m shining my light down into the hole. It’s beginning to clear a little. Dust from the broken concrete is still broiling around down there, so I can’t see very well. It’s beginning to clear a little. Now I can just vaguely see the bottom. It appears to be about six hundred feet deep. It’s hard to estimate it. From here it looks as though the object took a curved path after it entered the ground. The concrete here on the edge is still warm to the touch from the pressure and friction. I can’t hear anything or smell anything.”

He stood up and walked back, saying into the hand mike, “One of you men come over here to the trucks.”

They found one truck which was in good enough working order to get over to the rim of the hole. Its winch carried two hundred feet of fine wire cable. By robbing the winches of the other two trucks, Martin was able to link up a cable six hundred feet long. In forty minutes he was ready, and with his feet in a loop at the end of the cable, his good arm wrapped around the cable itself, the mike close to his lips, he gave the details of his descent to the second man whom he had posted a good quarter-mile from the edge of the hole.

“The walls seem to be smooth. The object penetrated the topsoil and then crashed through various strata of rock without appearing to change its shape or size. Now the side walls are granite. There is considerable seepage of water. Now I can plainly see that the hole curves. Yes, it is a sharp curve. From here, it looks as though it might be a full ninety-degree turn. I can feel an odd throbbing in the air around me... Now the curve is so sharp that I’m scraping against the far side of the hole from the side where the truck is parked. After I slide down a bit further, the slant will be shallow enough that I can climb down.”

In a few seconds he shouted up the shaft, “Hold it right there. Don’t haul up until I give the order.”

Leaving the loop resting against the rock slope, he gave one quick glance up at the bright stars, then walked clown to where the side became the floor of what seemed to be a mammoth tunnel stretching away into the gloom.

He turned his light down the tunnel. His voice was tense as he said into the mike, “I can see a shining object that reflects my light. It’s only about a hundred feet from where I stand. And... Wait! Yes, I can seem to detect some sort of move—”

Twenty minutes later, hearing no further sound, the listener, one Corporal Denty, came cautiously to the edge of the hole. He whispered to Pfc. Chase, “Not a peep out of him for nearly a half-hour.”

They both looked down into the darkness. Denty was the one who unhooked the spotlight, spliced wires so they could shine it down. They saw the empty loop of the cable far below.

“Cave-in maybe?” Chase asked. “No, it couldn’t be. I would have heard it. What the hell happened!”

“You want to go down and look!”

“Not me, brother!”

“Let’s get out of here!”

“Suppose he’s okay and wants to be hauled up?”

“If he was okay we would have heard something. This makes me nervous. Let’s get the hell out. Come on!”

Before dawn, after the empty vehicles had returned to the Chemung Valley cave, a distant tower radioed a report in code to the Commanding General of Advance Section Three. The general’s name was Walter Argo, and he was a very tired and very apprehensive man. But he was also very familiar with the odd tricks that imagination can play in time of war.

He passed the report on to his G-2, who in turn gave it to the Staff Ordnance Officer who passed it on to Colonel Rudley Wing, the Rocket Disposal Officer, who assigned it to Captain Jakob Van Meer, who, shortly before noon, picked up the necessary equipment and a squad of nine technicians. and two disposal trucks and headed back for the rear area of Advance Section Three to the spot indicated in the radio.

Jakob Van Meer was a doughty little officer with a fat slack face, sleepy eyes and enough raw courage for a dozen men.

He whistled softly as he saw the size of the hole. Even in the autumn sunlight it looked ominous.

He deposited his radio truck a good six miles away after he saw the hole, and made very certain that each broadcast word was being inscribed on the metal tape. If this was a new weapon, Jakob Van Meer would give future disposal experts plenty to go on, when he himself went up in bits at the heart of a mighty blast.

One trustworthy man stayed on the brink with the special winch equipment. Before Van Meer went down the hole, he listened to the verbal account of Corporal Denty, then put what seemed to be a gigantic stethoscope flat against the ground and bent over to listen.

He frowned. “Damn! I can hear something down there. But there’s no regularity to it. Just some miscellaneous thumping. Well, go ahead; lower away.”

Colonel Rudley Wing, a lean and sallow man, felt a thickness in his throat as he read the report which was, in effect, the obituary of Jakob Van Meer. He shut his jaw hard and walked down the dimly-lighted corridor to the offices of General Argo. Argo saw him at once, had him sit down and held a match for his cigarette.

Wing’s voice sounded odd in his own ears as he said, “That oversized rocket, sir. One of my... No. My best officer investigated. He got halfway down when it all went wrong.”

“Exploded?”

“No. This is pretty odd. The man on the brink went off his nut. Then a man posted three hundred yards back felt panic and extreme exhaustion. He said he was being forced somehow to desert his post and run like hell. Even the men six miles back felt very depressed. After a time, the feeling of depression lifted. They went cautiously back to the hole. The one who had gone mad was dead. So was Van Meer when they hauled him up. His face was contorted. The examining doctor said there was serious damage to the inner ear. He also said that the cause of death was the generation of internal heat in the bodies of the two men. You know the answer to that one, sir.”

“Hypersonics!” the general gasped, his face white.

“Yes, but more effective than anything we’ve heard of before. Panic within hundreds of yards. Black depression six miles away.”

Argo picked up a pencil and tapped the point gently against the steel surface of his desk. “The projectile was what generated this hypersonic wave?”

“There’s no other answer.”

“Then that must be its purpose. I can’t see how we can rightly anticipate a dual function there.”

“What are your orders, sir?”

“Take one of Joe Branford’s engineer units and seal the hole up for good.”

Wing was relieved not to be asked to send another man. He knew that he would go himself rather than send another of his officers. And he did not relish the thought of hypersonic death.

Two hours after dusk the explosives blasted and hundreds of tons of crumbled rock and dirt filled the vast cavity. All civilians living within five miles of the edge of the hole were ordered to evacuate the area, and military roads were diverted to alternate routes.

Chapter Two The Wall

Alice Powell sat on the edge of the hard cot in her cubicle a quarter-mile underground. The circulation fan high in the corner made a soft droning.

The lid of her foot locker was open, and through tear-dimmed eyes she stared at the smiling picture of Martin Rhode, taped to the inside of the lid. It had been taken the day he enlisted, the day after the bombs had wiped out ten major cities. So long ago. Countless thousands of years ago.

She was a tall girl, her dusky blonde hair pulled tightly back, her uniform crisp and white. But her face was puffy with tears.

She held her own wrist so tightly that the nails bit into the skin, and yet there was no pain which could equal the pain of her great loss.

“There will, of course, be a posthumous decoration,” Colonel Wing had said gently.

What good is that? When those strong brown hands are sealed in the eternal darkness far below the shattered earth.

She heard the distant determined whine of one of the ward buzzers. She sighed, stood up, brushed a wisp of hair back with the back of her hand. It was bed four again. The double amputation. With swift and gentle fingers she injected the morphine.

The lieutenant of engineers saluted crisply and Colonel Wing smiled tiredly, said, “How did it go?”

There was a taught look about the young man’s mouth. “What’s down in that hole, sir?”

“We don’t exactly know. Some sort of device that generates supersonic waves, we believe. Why?”

“Well, sir, we sealed it. Did a good job, too. When we were I’d say about five hundred yards away, I looked back and saw dirt and rock go up like a fountain. I didn’t hear any second explosion. It looked as though the dirt went up about two thousand feet. We went like hell to get out of there, but even so, a hunk of rock as big as my fist came down through the hood and disabled us. The driver said he could make temporary repairs. Two of my men and I went back and took a look. The hole was as clean as a whistle. The diameter at the brink was so much bigger that we couldn’t seal it again. Not enough stuff with us. So I thought I’d better report, sir. Do you want me to try again?”

Wing looked at him for long moments, then stood up. “Come along. I want the general to hear this.”

General Argo listened, asked a few questions, then said angrily, “That affair is taking too much of my time.” He opened a switch on the interphone, said, “Benny? I’ve got a special job for one of your boys. Pick a good one, one that can drop a lump of sugar into a cup of tea from eighty thousand. Low level work. I want a four-thousand-pound D.A. dropped into some mysterious damn hole we’ve got in the rear area. Have your boy get the dope from Colonel Wing. Thanks, Benny.”

The runway started in the heart of a mountain. Johnny Roak had the ship airborne by the time he hit daylight. The jets lifted the ship in an almost vertical climb as Johnny whistled between his teeth. It was one of the hit-and-run bombers, capable of a top speed of eleven hundred, and a minimum speed of forty, once the huge flaps were at full. As the tight cockpit began to heat up, Johnny increased the refrigeration. Directly under him, concealed by the bomb-bay doors, was the egg he was to drop. In the map panel sandwiched between dials, the three-dimensional map, synchronized for ground speed and direction, moved smoothly.

He saw that he was nearing his target and decided to take a practice run at it, then make a 180° and come hack. When he was ten miles away he looked at the landscape and frowned. The autumn grass and leaves had an odd look. Almost as though they had been scorched. The hole seemed to be well inside this scorched area, possibly at the middle of it. He saw that very soon he would begin to pass over the scorched area.

He began once more to whistle. It was a nice day.

Colonel Benjamin Cord wheeled on the young captain and said, “Let me know when you begin to need my permission to spit, or wash your face. Send another plane.”

Three hours later Colonel Cord flung open the door of the general’s office without knocking. Argo was on the verge of reminding Cord of the common courtesies when he saw the expression on Cord’s face.

“What on earth is the matter, Benny?” he asked.

“That — that damnable hole! It’s cost me three planes and three good men.”

Argo’s eyes widened. “How?”

“The first ship blew up in midair. So did the second ship, and at just about the same place. The third time I sent two, one trailing the other at a mile. The third ship gave a running verbal account. Apparently that hole you talk about is the center of a parched area. The following chip reported that as the third ship reached the edge of the parched area, it blew up. Just like that!” Cord snapped his fingers. “Nobody had a chance.”

The lead truck of a fast convoy stopped dead much faster than any brakes could have brought it to a halt. It was on the alternate route which was supposed to take it around the area where the mysterious rocket had fallen.

The two men in the lead truck were killed instantly, and the single man in the second truck was badly injured. The third truck was so far back that the driver had time to wrench the wheel over and slam into a deep ditch. The truck overturned, but the driver was uninjured. The other trucks managed to stop without serious injury.

The first man to reach the lead truck saw that the hood was curiously crumpled. The door was jammed, but he climbed up and flashed his light in the window. The heavy motor had crushed the two men where they sat. As yet he hadn’t seen what they had hit. He stood and flashed his light ahead. There was nothing there. He wondered if some sort of dud artillery shell had hit the truck dead center.

He walked up to look, and slammed into something solid. It was so unexpected that it knocked him down. He flashed his light and saw... nothing. By then several other men had come up to him. He warned them, and then advanced cautiously. His fingertips touched a smooth hard surface, a surface that was faintly warm to the touch. The other in men thought he was suffering from shock until he finally grabbed one of them and thrust him against the invisible wall. It was higher than they could reach and, at the deep ditch, it followed the contour so that there was no place to crawl under or measure the thickness of the obstacle.

They talked about it being some new sabotage device planted there by an invader patrol, but it was too far in the rear to have been so planted.

One of the men suggested that it might have something to do with the large rocket that had fallen in the area, but he was laughed down. The rocket was three miles away.

Their lights shone through the obstacle without any of the distortion of vision which would have indicated a glassy substance.

The man who had first discovered the obstacle lifted one of the Galton guns from a truck and, standing six feet from the barrier, held the gun at waist level and fired a prolonged burst. There was no danger of ricochet, because the heat generated by impact at that velocity turned the tiny slugs immediately from a solid to a gas. The gun made its high siren wail, and the area of impact glowed red-white with the hot gases. After the burst that point of the barrier was too hot to touch. When it had cooled, they were able to feel no scratch or dent on its surface, thus proving it to be a harder substance than any they had ever encountered.

They found a drum which contained tracer load, and one man took a gun back two hundred yards. He fired short bursts at a constantly increasing angle. A thousand feet above the road the thin white lines of the tracer slugs still stopped sharply at the barrier.

The convoy was reorganized and before they left, one man found white paint and slapped huge crosses on the invisible barrier to warn any subsequent convoy. He was subsequently commended for this foresight.

On pleasant days, Stanford Rider, the President of the United States, Supreme Commander of the United Forces of the Allied Nations, was permitted to board the silent elevator and ride, with his bodyguard, up the two-thousand-foot shaft to the observation room.

The observation room fronted on a sheer rock wall in one of the lesser peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. A powerful electric motor slid back the whole wall of the observation room; the wall was heavy because the outer surface of it was made of slabs of native rock.

Stanford Rider was a tall lean man with a pale, pouched face, sparse sandy hair and alert blue eyes. Years before, the lines in his face had accentuated his gift of laughter. But the years of war and danger, the constant threat of defeat, had sagged those lines into a continual moroseness, almost apathetic in its perpetual intensity.

His eyes brightened when he saw the blue of the sky, the misted purple of the far mountains. No three-dimensional color photography, no amount of synthetic sunlight could compensate for the reality he witnessed.

He knew that even as he had stepped into the elevator two thousand feet below, radar watch had been re-doubled and fighters had been sent up so high as to be invisible. Interceptor rockets lay fat and sleeping in the deep launching ramps, their dull stubborn noses shining metallically, their single-purpose brains ready to begin functioning at the first thrust of incredible acceleration.

He stood, his shoulders slumped, his arms hanging slack at his sides, looking at the sunlight through which he could not walk in freedom. Far below, in the warm guts of the inner earth, the nine-man War Council was in session. Later he would listen to the transcription after all repetitions and asides had been deleted. More decisions to be made. More lives to be lost. They were getting ever more anxious for him to launch another attack, impatient of the way he insisted on waiting for further development of the robot gun carriers.

He remembered the utter failure of the last attack, the horror and the agony of knowing that it had failed, and as he remembered, his mouth twisted. Yes, the attacking force had reached the sea, splitting the invader forces in half, but rocket supply had failed, they had been cut off and those who were not killed had been sent into slavery, the weapons they had carried being turned on their countrymen.

The potential attack was even more questionable in light of the odd new development in Advance Section Three. He puzzled over the report he had read. It was a war of technology, and he felt fear as he realized that the invader had created something beyond their ability to understand.

What was the name of the division commander? Oh, yes. Argo. Able man. He had sent in a very complete report. “The point of entrance of the large rocket appears to be the center point of a circular, transparent impenetrable barrier having a diameter of 9.14 miles. The surface of the barrier has a temperature of 88.1 degrees, and it accurately follows all ground contours. An attempt was made to tunnel under it, using the newest type mole, but at ninety feet below the surface, the mole struck the barrier and was unable to progress. Tests have indicated that the barrier reaches higher than the ceiling of any ship based here, but no attempt has yet been made to strike the barrier with a guided missile at stratosphere height, i.e. above one hundred miles. The vegetation inside the barrier appears to be parched, as though it had been subjected to great heat. It is surmised that certain civilian personnel may have been trapped inside the barrier, but close watch has disclosed no sign of them.

“The barrier appears to be impervious to all except light rays. Close watch with high power spotting scopes has indicated no activity within the area enclosed by the barrier. The thickness of the barrier is not accurately known. By close observation of the movement of dried grass just inside the barrier, it is believed to be extraordinarily thin, possibly less than an inch in thickness.

“No reasonable conjectures can be made. Morale within this section is suffering due to there being no official explanation of this phenomenon. Were such a barrier to be created so as to enclose some of our essential subterranean production facilities, our position would be seriously affected.

“Recommendations: 1. That the best scientific minds available be sent immediately to examine the barrier at first hand. 2. That an atomic bomb be placed so as to explode against the barrier.”

Yes, it was a good report. Within an hour or so, he would hear the report of the results of the atomic blast.

He took a long look at the sunshine, then turned and signaled to the guard. The motor droned and the wall slid slowly back into place. With tired, heavy steps he walked into the elevator. As it started down, he leaned against the inside wall and closed his eyes.

Field Marshal Torkel Jatz stretched out on the hard cot in his headquarters and frowned up at the ceiling. He knew that he was in no physical danger, and yet he was oddly uncomfortable. His headquarters were two thousand feet below the surface of Manhattan Island. Above him were the shattered buildings, the lethal radioactivity that had resulted from the underwater explosions which had hoisted countless millions of tons of radioactive sea water high in the air, the in-shore wind carrying them across the shattered buildings and empty streets.

The entrance to his headquarters was through an amazingly long lateral tunnel which connected with a winding shaft, the opening of which was beyond the boundaries of dangerous radioactivity.

He thought of the biting sarcasm of the last orders he had received from his home country. Yes, they were growing tired of the holding war, tired of the ceaseless drain on resources and manpower.

Ah, but they did not understand these people. Yes, the invasion had been successful, and the beachhead, in the first weeks of surprise, had grown enormously. But these people fought for their home soil, prodigious in their courage, reckless in their hate.

They could not understand it at home, but all he could do was to cling tenaciously to his perimeter defences and continually request new and better weapons which would once more give him the edge, make a further advance possible.

He snorted. They were politicians who continually nibbled at him. Jatz had no interest in politicians. He was a soldier, a lean, hard, tough man in his middle forties, a man who, if necessary, could go out into the filth and mud of the lines and carry the burden of a combat soldier. A man who could handle any command in his forces, from platoon leader to Field Marshal.

Why did they keep sniping at him? Was Rinelli doing any better in Brazil? Was Sigitz performing any miracles along the Salween?

If only he could have the pleasure of the company of a few of those bureaucrats for several weeks. He’d take them out and give them a look at the vicious night-patrol warfare, let them hear the dread siren scream of the Galton guns, let them see a soldier struck by one of those tiny slugs, the instant convulsive death.

What they couldn’t understand was that there were no targets for the rockets, no concentrations of production facilities. And the use of spies was technologically obsolete. Each man in the defending forces, before being given knowledge of any installation, was tested with the serums.

He remembered the attack that had split the beachhead into two parts, and had almost succeeded. Another such attack would be due before long. He hammered his fist against the stone wall, cursing the scientists of his country.

After being spurred on to peak activity, it was the defenders who, after all, had developed a new weapon. He didn’t know very much about it yet. Just one report of it.

An aerial photograph had given the rocket command a faint target, a traffic pattern in the hills of the Chemung Valley, and what looked like a cave entrance.

Ten huge rockets had been launched simultaneously, with the idea that possibly one or two would get through. The observers had reported that the entire flight of rockets had been destroyed at the highest point of their arc. No interceptor rockets had gone up. Of that the observers were certain. Their report said that it was as though all ten rockets had hit some solid object towering high above the earth.

His aide walked briskly in, saluted, his hand slapping the side of his thigh as he brought his arm down smartly.

“Sir, the robot gun carrier that was captured in the northern sector is ready for inspection.”

Jatz stood up wearily, and he knew that in his heart he was afraid. Robot gun carriers, ray screens, rockets detonating harmlessly miles above the earth. How soon would they be driven back into the sea?

Chapter Three The Beast

Martin Rhode had learned many new and intricate convolutions of the emotion commonly known as fear. There was, of course, a feeling of horror, primitive, superstitious awe at seeing anything so completely alien. But had gradually diminished in intensity.

The fear that didn’t diminish was the acute physical fear of the sweating and the pain. He had walked a little way along the floor of the raw tunnel, the loop of cable behind him. Then he had seen movement. He had tried to tell of seeing the movement, and suddenly he could not move. The sweat boiled out of his body and he had stood, his underlip sagging away from his teeth, unable to change even the focus or direction of his glance.

The pain was in his ears and his head. Because it seemed to be focused in his ears, he thought of hypersonics.

He could see slow, fumbling movements in the distance, faintly lighted by a glow that seemed to come from a huge metallic thing that filled the tunnel from wall to wall.

He could not move, and the fumbling thing had come toward him, and it was like a nightmare of childhood, himself unable to turn, unable to escape. It was a large thing, greyish white, moving along the dirt floor of the tunnel.

Because his eyes were still focused on the distant place, he could not look at it.

Greyish white, moving along the dirt floor.

It was as though mental fingers fumbled at his mind. It was as though a stranger were fitting an unfamiliar key to an unknown door in a strange house in a foreign city...

Thoughts, unexpressed in words. Thoughts to which he had to fit the words.

The thought of heaviness, and intense cold. He could not move. Slowly the odd pressure on him diminished, and with a great effort he turned his glance downward.

His eyes had become used to the faint glow. The thing on the floor was a vast, pulpy, obscene caricature of a man. Naked and grey. Eyes with faceted prisms protruding from the face, a tiny furred orifice below the eyes, and a wide lemon-yellow gash that was a mouth. Ten feet tall if standing, he guessed. The arms were oddly jointed and there was something horribly wrong about the hands and fingers, the fingers curling to the outside of where the wrists should be, rather than in toward the body.

Something else horribly wrong. The suety grey fat of the body was dragged down toward the floor of the cave, and the creature moved with great difficult as though it were being subjected to a centrifuge. He comprehended that this was an alien, a creature from space, and that it was accustomed to far lesser gravity.

The mental fingers moved in his brain with more certainty. The thoughts said, “You are a primitive creature. Where are your masters?”

He found his lips could move. “There are no masters,” he said, startled by the sound of his voice in the silence. He tried to lift the microphone to his lips but he could not move it.

“You are the apex of life on this planet,” the thoughts said.

And he was ashamed, somehow. Humbled. As though contempt had somehow been put in his mind. It was primitive and absurd to have made sounds with his lips.

The creature seemed to be contemplating him. Suddenly the mike slipped, fell to the short length of flexible cord, banged against his thigh. Woodenly his hands unbuckled the straps and the equipment fell to the crushed rock floor.

With even regular steps he walked toward the big shining ship from space. As he walked he marveled that one part of his mind could accept orders and issue the neural instructions to the necessary parts of his body without his being aware of the action until it was under way. For the first time he began to wonder if actually the walls of the deep hole had fallen in on him without warning, and this was one of the early dreams in death.

Behind him he heard the click of small stones as the creature followed him laboriously. A vast port was open in the stern of the ship. He stepped through and his second step inside the ship, in the warm blue-grey glow, sent him floating toward a far wall. The sensation twisted his stomach and he was suddenly and violently ill.

When he turned, the creature was behind him, and it stood erect. He saw that the hairless head was far too small for the massive body. In the lesser gravity inside the ship the big creature moved with the controlled ease of a man on earth. Martin’s slightest movement sent him blundering out of control.

He turned sharply and floated into a slow fall as another of the creatures appeared in a huge doorway to his right.

He knew that they communicated with each other, as alien thoughts seemed to rush through his mind, just beyond his ability to comprehend. He detected the contempt of the second creature, and it seemed a sharper scorn than that which the first one had expressed.

One quick thought seemed to smell of death, and the first one protested and there was a mental shrug from the second one. A mental shrug which said, “Do what you please with it.”

The second creature turned and left. The one who had crawled on the tunnel floor and now stood erect sent flashing into Martin’s mind a vague thrust of amusement, of casual interest. Martin suddenly realized that it was the same sort of emotion that he might express concerning a strange dog who had wandered across his path.

At that, the creature’s amusement seemed to grow more intense, and Martin guessed that he had intercepted and interpreted the thought.

The air inside the ship was very hot, and very moist. The creature seemed to sweat not at all. Martin Rhode felt his clothes clinging to him. He was still nauseated from the effect of the lesser gravity.

Once again his legs began to move without his volition, thrusting him awkwardly against a wall, then carrying him through the doorway. He gasped as he looked up a seemingly endless corridor, illuminated by the blue-grey radiance that seemed to shine out from the metallic corridor walls. Everything was too big.

His steps carried him down the hall in long bounds, halting him before another doorway. He went into the room and he was alone. It was a room twenty feet square, half as high. He could move freely. He wanted to look out in the corridor again. But when he tried to go through the doorway, he ran against an invisible, transparent substance. He could not get through the doorway. He removed most of his clothes, and made a rude bed of them. He was tired and he went to sleep, as though ordered to sleep.

He awakened hearing a throb of power, a distant clanking. He was in a different part of the ship: a larger room with a huge port in one side. He stood up, forgetting the gravity, smacked lightly against the high ceiling and floated down gently.

He looked through the port and saw a vast square room. The two creatures he had seen before were outside the ship, and yet they moved easily. The room had evidently been hollowed out of the solid rock. It appeared to be at least two hundred feet square and fifty feet high. The side of the ship had been brightened in some manner so that the radiance of it filled the furthest corners of the room.

When he looked more closely at the two creatures, he saw that they wore close-fitting suits of metal. He guessed that the garments duplicated the gravitational conditions existing within the ship.

He was puzzled by their activities, apparently they were assembling some sort of equipment, but it was foreign to anything in his experience. The way they walked about was odd, due to the extra joint in their legs, a joint which was like a second knee bending in the opposite direction.

A huge cube of milky glass, thirty feet on a side, rested near the far wall. Within the cube he could vaguely make out the intricate form of what appeared to be a large natural crystal formation, hexagonal in shape. The crystal seemed to shimmer behind the clouded walls of the cube.

Supports slanted out from the top four corners of the cube as though the cube were supporting the weight of a far greater area of the ceiling.

He saw no other representatives of the odd race, and began to wonder if only the two of them had arrived in this spaceship which had punched its way down through the Earth’s crust, as though diving into water.

A great desire for sleep welled over him and he let himself sink to the floor. Something about the warm, moist air inside the ship, he guessed...

He awakened the second time on a high bench. One of the creatures stood looking down at him, and he saw the fine hair encircling the oval orifice in the middle of its face move as it breathed. The lemon-yellow slash of its mouth showed no semblance of teeth.

The mental fumbling was gone. The thoughts were clear, precise, incisive.

“You are of a warlike race. We have had difficulty with your people. A — has been placed around this area to keep them away.” One word was a blank. He had no word to fit the thought. It gave him the impression of immovable force, a linkage of particles of pure force.

“Where are you from?” Martin Rhode projected the thought as clearly as he could.

“A far place.”

“Who are you?”

“This will be difficult for a primitive to comprehend. We are two of a warrior race. This planet is much as our planet must have been countless eons ago. I have never seen our home planet. My brother and I were born in space, as were thirty generations before us. We are accustomed to lesser gravity, and the constant heat inside our ship. Your planet is cold, and gravity makes us very heavy. My brother has requested that I destroy you, as we have learned from you all that is necessary for us to know. But I have a foolish sentiment about you. You are as our race must have once been. To see you is to look into the dim past. We have seen many primitives on many strange planets that circle unknown suns. You are more like what we must have once been than any we have yet seen. Thus, there is a sentiment that fills my mind when I look on you and think on your desperate, petty little wars, like children with rocks and slings.”

In the thoughts there was such a powerful impression of great age and aloofness that Martin Rhode felt small and awed.

His lips trembled as he expressed the thought, “You called your people a warrior race?”

“Like yours. In the beginning tribe fights tribe, then city fights city, then nation fights nation, then continent fights continent. That is your present stage. Should you survive this stage, you will find planet fighting planet, then solar system fighting foreign solar system, and at last galaxy warring with galaxy. Who can tell? Possibly beyond that is universe making war with universe, or dimension against dimension. In each step there is always the possibility of mutual extermination, and with that, the peace that living things can find. Only in death is there peace, and death is the final step.”

There was horror in those thoughts. Horror and great age and great resignation.

“We have been at war with another race for eight hundred of your lifetimes. This other race is aquatic, and their spaceships are filled with the fluids of their home planet, long since destroyed. Our great fleets are no more. All told, we probably have no more than five thousand ships, four hundred thousand individuals out of the millions upon millions who once existed. This small patrol ship of ours was pursued. The ships from which we fled are somewhere in this vicinity.”

Martin’s head was whirling. He thought, “What are you planning to do here?”

“We will make certain preparations. Then we will let our presence here be known. When the pursuing ships are within proper range, we will explode this planet. We will die, of course, but the gases of the explosion with great speed, will engulf some of their ships and the heat will kill a great many of them, boil them alive in the fluids of their ships.”

Martin Rhode’s mind rocked under the implications of the statement. He wanted to believe that it was some sort of a trick, and yet the calm certainty in the thoughts that had lanced his mind made belief inescapable.

“Kill all of us! All of us!” he said aloud.

“Believe me, creature, it is something that you will eventually do to yourselves if we do not do it. For uncounted generations we talked of the end of war. Now we know — there is no end.”

Martin searched unsuccessfully for some way to refute the alien’s argument. Impossible. The alien had all the weight of fact on its side. Fighting down his despair, Martin asked, “How will you explode our planet?”

“With an ancient technique. It is a technique that you creatures possess. The power of the atom. It was used without avail against our—.” Again that thought for which there was no word. “Our power is derived from the controlled oscillation of crystals subjected to electromagnetic impulses. That is what drives this ship at speed equal to forty times the circumference of your planet within a space of time equal to three pulsations of the organ which circulates your blood.

“With the power of the crystals, we will compress hundreds of thousands of tons of the matter of which your planet is composed into a very small space. It is the principle which limits the maximum size of planets through molecular compression at the core. The atoms will be crushed. With this small substance of enormous weight, we will have a fuse. By heating it instantaneously to critical temperature, once again through the crystal, we will induce a chain reaction which will detonate this planet. That is the work my brother is doing now. He is setting up the necessary equipment to begin the task of compression. The ultimate bit of matter will have ten million times the density of water.”

Martin was silent. The thoughts were once again clear to him. “I can feel your grief and your sense of loss, creature. You are thinking that those of your race will continue with their pointless war up to the moment of extinction. You are thinking that if you could escape, you could warn them. They would think you mad. They cannot come to this place because of the—. Your wish is futile.”

Martin Spoke aloud: “Could you — could you give my people some unmistakable evidence of all this? Just so they would stop fighting for the short time they have left?”

He could read no expression in the faceted eyes. There was a slight movement of the lemon-yellow mouth.

“It might be amusing. What mechanical device do you use to communicate with each other? I will speak to my brother.”

“I dropped a short-range radio on the floor of the tunnel.”

The creature stood up and left. Martin Rhode sat on the bench, his face in his hands. So this was the climax of the empty years. There was no denying the truth of the thoughts he had read.

He guessed that it was a half-hour before the creature came back. “This is a simple device. Apparently your whole planet is served with less power than is needed to operate our small ship. Within a few hours I can construct a device which will enable you to reach every one of these devices on your planet, covering simultaneously all bands and wavelengths. Do many of your people have them?”

“Every soldier wears a small one on his wrist. Orders are given over them. There are few dwellings on the planet without one.”

The alien grimaced. “My brother does not object to my amusing myself by giving all of your people some small period of peace before death.”

In the long ward there was soft music, selected for its therapeutic value. It also concealed the drugged moans of the seriously wounded.

Alice Powell was marking a chart when the music faded and the strong voice, the familiar voice rang out. She dropped the pen and put her hand to her throat.

“This is Martin Rhode speaking. My voice is coming simultaneously from every radio set in the world. The earth has been invaded from outer space. The barrier which you cannot penetrate protects these strange beings while they work. I am held captive. I know their plans...”

On Colonel Wing’s desk was a picture of his wife and children. They had died during the first week of the war. After Martin finished speaking, Colonel Wing picked up the picture and sat very still, looking at the familiar faces.

Field Marshall Jatz listened until the voice died, and then he struck his aide heavily in the mouth. “Listen!” he roared. “Another weapon they have developed! What is wrong with our people?”

The aide crawled to the doorway, blood smearing his chin.

Stanford Rider sat at his long desk, his face in his hands. After Martin had stopped speaking he began to laugh. The tone of his laughter crept constantly higher and the tears began to run down his face. It took a long time to quiet him.

In all the places below the hard crust of the world, people listened to the words of Martin Rhode. Many of them did not understand his language. But many millions did understand, and it was easier to believe that it was a trick than to believe what Martin Rhode had said.

Martin Rhode stood and looked into the shining screen as the huge grey-white creature manipulated the dials. In a barren ravine men fought and died, and blood stained the rocks in the pale sunshine.

“You see, creature, they did not believe you. It is as I told you.”

Martin felt grief well up within him. “Can’t you do anything to make them believe?” he asked desperately.

No thought came to Martin for many minutes. Then he received the thought of laughter. Wry laughter.

“You creatures do not communicate through thought. I believe I am beginning to understand your psychology. I will hook up the drive crystal of the ship, using it to amplify my thoughts. I will use you as a target so that my thoughts will be keyed to the minds of your creatures. Then I will give each of them a clear mental picture of me, an impression of great fear, and a view of the destruction of this planet. Then they will no longer doubt.”

An hour later the hookup was ready. A small room near the rear of the ship. A large metallic object, shaped like a funnel.

The full impetus of the thoughts crashed in on Martin Rhode’s brain. In the beginning the thoughts had been like awkward fingers. Then they had achieved deftness and finish. But he knew at that moment that all that had gone before had been gentle, almost tender. These were not thoughts to be articulated into words. These were raw emotions, driven into his mind as though by a pneumatic hammer placed against the grey jelly of his brain.

He recoiled and he felt his mouth twisting, heard his own weak scream echo in his ears. In his mind he saw a huge image of one of the aliens, faceted eyes blazing. The fear was like no fear he had ever experienced. It was complete and utter horror! Then it was as though he were snapped off into space, looking down at the Earth, a planet the size of half a grain of rice. Huge ships ripped noiselessly by, headed for Earth. Then once again he was below the Earth’s surface. The two grey-white creatures stood, intent, watching a view-screen. Red light emanating from the heart of a crystal played fitfully across a dark one-inch cube which rested in the centre of a huge plate of grey metal.

Once again he was in outer space. The ships drove closer to earth. This time Earth seemed to be the size of a baseball.

Suddenly it erupted into a glaring sheet of white flame which engulfed the spaceships, and he fell fainting to the floor.

When he awakened, before his eyes, he intercepted the thought of anger. He looked up into the face of the creature. “You nearly destroyed the effect, creature. In the midst of it you made a loud sound with your mouth. It gave me pain. Do not do it again.”

Chapter Four The Final War

Joseph Huddy, one of eight survivors of a daylight infiltration patrol, stood up behind the rock where he had sought shelter. He rubbed the back of a dirty hand across his wet forehead and glanced apprehensively toward the grey sky.

He thought, “That joker that talked this morning wasn’t kidding!” He did not think it odd that, though he had failed to believe the broadcast at the time, he suddenly believed it now. If asked, he would have said, “Hell, all of a sudden I could see those zombies, the big grey boys. Scared me, damn if it didn’t!”

Dazed, he looked up the small ravine. One of “them” was standing in plain sight. By force of habit, Joe snatched up his forgotten weapon, leveled it at the stocky foreigner. But suddenly he thought that it was pretty silly to get all hot about killing one of “them” when there was a far greater danger. His finger relaxed, slid off the trigger.

With sudden resolution, he tossed the gun aside, yelled, “Hey there!”

The stocky man looked down toward him, grinned nervously. A few moments later they had exchanged cigarettes, were squatting on their heels.

“I be damn,” Joe said. “You all of a sudden saw that big grey thing too?”

“I see,” the man said, his eyes round and wide. He shuddered.

“What about this war we’re having?” Joe asked.

The man thumped his chest. “Me, I quit. Go home. See wife before — boom!”

“Not a bad idea. Hell, if any officers see us though, we’ll both be shot.”

In response the man merely pointed with his thick thumb. Joe looked over his shoulder. Fifty feet away the lieutenant in charge of Joe’s patrol stood chatting with an enemy officer. They both seemed excited.

“Something tells me the war’s over,” Joe said wonderingly.

General Argo and Field Marshal Jatz looked at each other with impassive faces. Suddenly Argo grinned. “I’m going to get myself court-martialed for this little tea-party.”

Jatz relaxed and scratched his head. He looked worried. “I also. Never should have come here to this country in the first place.”

Argo said quietly, “We’ve been trying to convince you people of that, you know.”

Jatz grinned. “You have been very convincing, my friend. But somehow... I do not know how to say it. We were enemies. Now we are both... men. Brothers. Like two relatives fighting and along comes a peacemaker and they both turn on him. Now we have a strange race. A stronger enemy.”

“Would you like to take a look at the barrier?”

For a moment Jatz hesitated. Then he shrugged. “I have nothing to fear from you, my friend. I would like very much to take a look at this barrier. I lost rockets against it and thought it was something you people had devised.”

“We thought it was something you put there.”

Side by side they walked down the long corridor toward the waiting elevator. Their staff officers followed along, seeing nothing particularly strange in this odd and amicable alliance.

All over the world hate was forgotten — hate for other men. Fear of other men was forgotten. In its place was hatred of the invader from space, fear of the sudden death of the world.

The three battle fronts of the world dissolved. The leaders of all nations flew by fastest means to the hidden field in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

A lean and tired man presided at the long polished table. His name was Stanford Rider.

“Possibly all of you share my own feeling of guilt. We, the statesmen and politicians of the world, made possible the conditions which resulted in this deadly and barren war which has laid waste our countries and impoverished our peoples.”

He paused, saw reluctant agreement on every face. He continued. “Now we are met on a far different battlefield. Now our conflicts between nations are childish by comparison. We are in the position of small creatures of the forest beneath whom has been placed a mighty charge of explosives. It may be that we will be as powerless to alter the course of events as the wild creatures would be to halt the operation of the time fuse on the hidden mines.

“These may be the last few days of our lives. At least for these last few days there will be peace among men of all nations. Our psychiatrists have told me that the visions we all saw were activated by a projection of thought more powerful than we can contemplate. It is futile to question the accuracy of the visions we all saw. We saw our planet being destroyed in order to wipe out the ships of some unknown race which is at war with the strangers from space who have invaded our planet.

“In this perilous extremity, I invite your suggestions.”

Every known force was applied to the barrier. The most powerful atomic explosion ever released on Earth was detonated close to the barrier. Squadrons of high-explosive rockets exploded in sequence, in unison, in bursts of ten, fifty and five hundred, expended their fury against the barrier.

And in the end they accomplished no more than would have been achieved by one small boy armed with a pebble and a dry stick.

Martin Rhode felt the distant rumble and thud, heard the flakes of rock dropping from the tunnel roof. He learned to operate the clear and perfect screen and watched the efforts to destroy the barrier. He saw that peace had come to the world, and smiled wryly, knowing that for the first time since crude pictures were scratched on the walls of caves, no men were locked in combat anywhere in the world. Here and now was the dream of all Utopians.

The alien had gained such new facility with Martin’s mind that he could reach him from great distances.

“My brother has completed his preparations. It may interest you to watch the actual operation. Soon we will be ready.”

The huge room that had been hollowed out of the rock had been enlarged to an incredible distance. Martin Rhode stood near the glowing hull of the spaceship and saw that six crystals stood at equal intervals around a dull black cube that measured ten feet on a side.

The thoughts knifed into his mind. “All the matter excavated here has been compressed into that cube. It weighs half a million tons. The atomic structure is partially crushed. Stay where you are. This final operation will completely crush the atomic structure, compressing it to a smaller area than exists at the heart of any known planet. This final operation will compress that cube until it is two centimeters on each side.”

Martin gasped. Half a million tons contained within a space of eight cubic centimeters!

“The large block is resting on a metal plate. After the compression operation, the small cube will be supported by the thick metal plate, which is electronically stiffened to hold it. One crystal will be brought closer to it, with its heat potential focused directly upon it. At that point we will attract the attention of our pursuers and wait until they are within range. Every last fragment of the atomic energy in half a million tons of matter will be released instantaneously. This planet will cease to exist, as it becomes, for a brief space, a supernova.”

Martin Rhode stood and his nails bit into his palms and he gulped the hot, moist air in shallow breaths. The crystals began to glow and a low humming sound filled the chamber. Their glow was pale violet, and as the sound increased, the glow rose through the spectrum. By the time the glow was a hot, angry red, the humming had risen to a shrill scream. The scream faded away and Martin was torn by the agony of hypersonics.

The cube shrank! So slowly at first that he could barely see the change, and then more rapidly. Soon the top surface was level with his eyes, then he could see the top of it. From the cube came an angry crackling, a groan of tortured matter. It was the size of a hatbox. Constantly smaller. He felt his internal body heat rise under the unheard whine of hypersonics and the crystals vibrated until they could be seen only as deep glowing spots.

Suddenly the pressure stopped. Martin’s knees sagged and he nearly fell. As though hypnotized, he walked slowly forward so that he could see more clearly the tiny cube.

The thoughts that he intercepted were thoughts of satisfaction, of accomplishment.

He stood and looked down at the metal plate. The cube was black, and it shone like polished ebony.

Then he noticed an odd thing. It appeared to be sinking into the metal plate, and the metal seemed to be floating away from it as though suddenly molten.

Even as he looked down at it, the warm and satisfied thoughts that had come to him changed abruptly to alarm. He caught scattered phrases.

“... gravity too great... metal not strong enough... reinforce quickly... full power...”

Quickly he comprehended that with the full half-million tons of weight, the tiny cube was like the point of a huge pyramid, and by pure weight it was sinking into the plate like the sharp point of a drill.

He looked and saw one of the grey-white creatures running awkwardly toward an instrument panel which it had left but a few seconds before.

He remembered the anger that he had witnessed when he had screamed faintly under the shock of the emotional images that had been placed in his mind.

Even as the creature reached a pulpy hand out toward the instrument panel, Martin Rhode threw his head back and screamed with the full power of his lungs, screamed knowing that the alien vibration would torture them, screamed with the anger and pride and courage of all outraged mankind.

The running creature stumbled, fell heavily against the instrument panel and tumbled to the floor. The massive metal plates curled slowly up on either side, and then there was an odd noise, like a cork pulled from an enormous bottle through the underside of the plate.

He screamed again, the sound tearing his throat as he watched the twisted faces of the two creatures.

When he paused to catch his breath, their thoughts came clearer to him, and in them he sensed resignation, as though someone were saying sadly and softly, “Too late, too late.” Their anger was gone. The crystals were inert. There was a dim sound, the crackling and grinding of rocks, and that diminished into the distance, into the silence. Then there was nothing...

Martin knew that the tiny cube was sinking into the earth, gaining speed with increased momentum, and not even the resources of the two alien creatures could halt its progress.

They ignored him. They turned, clothed in the light mail, and began to walk toward the ship: two towering grey-white creatures out of an obscene dream of horror. He knew that they ignored him because he was too puny, too powerless.

With a low sound in his throat he attacked them from behind, and even as he charged, he felt their thoughts, dim because they were not directed at him, thoughts of escape from this place...

One started to turn even as his hand reached out. The mail ripped like wet cardboard and his hard hand bit through the very substance of the creature, cleaving through the damp, porous flesh. His hand struck the creature in the small of the back, ripped through, staggering Martin with the lack of resistance so that he fell, bounded to his feet to see the creature he had struck moving feebly against the rock floor, his thick body fluids lemon-yellow in the glow from the ship.

Once again the anger struck him and he bounded toward the remaining one, feeling the paralyzing whine of hypersonics, feeling the sudden heat that invaded his body. But he retained the will, the power to strike one blow before he became motionless. His clenched fist punched through the chain mail, slammed deep into the abdominal cavity of the thing, and it fell back toward the place where the metal plate lay, warped and useless.

But the faceted eyes still watched him and he stood, his face slack, trying in vain to break the paralysis engendered in him by the vibrations.

The creature held a grotesque hand over the torn hole in its middle, and tried to get up. Beyond it a wisp of smoke rose from the tiny hole in the plate and an acrid, sulphurous odor filled the cavern.

There was a rumbling sound, a low roaring, in the bowels of the earth. The smoke danced grey-white in the glow of the ship. Martin Rhode stood frozen and helpless, his stained fist still clenched, his teeth meeting in the flesh of his lower lip.

The low roar was louder and the metal plate quivered, was suddenly flipped over, as by a careless giant. Martin Rhode suddenly realized that the enormously heavy pellet had plunged down into the molten heart of the planet, providing an escape channel for the lava that boiled far below.

He was hearing the yowling birth of a volcano — and he was powerless to escape. He would have to remain fixed until the increasing heat boiled the blood in his veins.

The creature was closer to the opening, and as the first tentative reddish glow seared the mouth of the orifice, it tried feebly to move away.

But with the old, familiar clarity, the thoughts arrowed into Martin’s mind. He heard the mental laughter of the thing; wild laughter; the absurd, hysterical laughter of a being defeated by a far weaker creature.

The laughter slowly ended, and in its place came something oddly like compassion.

“Go!” the thoughts said. “Go quickly!”

The hypersonic spell was suddenly broken and Martin backed slowly away, his arm shielding his face from the increasing heat.

A viscous gout of lava arced up, splattered across the dying thing, and in Martin’s mind was the scream, telephathed in naked clarity.

He raced into the ship, down the long corridor, out the rear port into the tunnel the ship had made, floating and falling while in the ship, clawing raggedly at the smooth walls in his eagerness to leave.

No cable dangled as a means of escape when he reached the bend; but the explosions had made the hole like a vast funnel. Far above him sparkled the night stars. Sobbing aloud with reaction, with new fear, he clawed his way up where the slope seemed the most gentle, ripping his hands on the jagged rock, tasting the blood in his mouth from his mangled lip. Once a foothold crumpled and he slid, spread-eagled down for a dozen feet, stopped and clawed his way up with new anxiety.

At last he rolled panting, on the ground, the deep cavity beside him. The air was hot and still. He ran along the road, stumbling, falling, getting up once more, his breath wheezing and rasping in his throat, tears of weakness filling and stinging his eyes.

It seemed to him as though he were running in a dream. His legs were leaden, heavy, dull, and the pain was a jagged skewer in his side.

He ran against something solid, collapsed, his fingertips touching the firm warmth of the barrier, the concrete of the road warm and rough against his inflamed cheek.

Slowly and painfully he got to his feet, trapped in the odd warmth behind the barrier. He strained his eyes, staring into the night, trying to see if the atomic bombs had been tried at that place, leaving dangerous radioactives behind, which might sear him even through the barrier. The earth was pitted with high explosives, but he could see none of the vitrification that would indicate the use of atomics.

A distant thud and rumble behind him made him turn sharply. A red glare was spewing up into the night, the reflected glow pinkening the clouds that were shunted aside by the invisible barrier. He guessed that he had covered nearly four miles since clambering out of the deep pit. Even at that distance he could clearly make out the glowing white-hot clots of stone thrown toward the sky.

He was weak and he leaned one hand against the barrier for support. The barrier was indubitably created and maintained by some device aboard the spaceship. The spaceship was near the heart of the inferno...

Suddenly the support was gone and he sprawled awkwardly, cool air striking his face. The barrier was gone as if turned off by a distant switch, gone as though it had never existed.

He made his way across the shattered earth. On a high crest he saw the lights of dwellings far ahead. It was so long since man had lived above ground, had been able to show lights during the night.

Once again there were tears on his face, but this time they were tears of joy and thanksgiving.

After the conference, held for the sake of convenience in the great hall deep under the mountains, five of them rode up in the elevator: President Rider, Martin Rhode and the three guards.

The wall was already rolled back in the observation room. Stanford Rider’s shoulders were straighter than they had been in many a day. Martin Rhode was still lean and haggard from his experience.

The conference of the heads of nations at which Martin Rhode had given a detailed summary of his eight days of captivity had been over for a half-hour.

“I hope I made them understand, sir,” Martin said.

They stood side by side looking out across the wild and lovely mountains. “They understood,” Rider said simply.

“How long will all this last, sir?” Martin asked.

“What do you mean, Rhode?”

“Before we got to war again. Before it all starts over again.”

Rider’s smile was amused. “Ah, the pessimism of youth! No, Rhode, I believe that you have underestimated the effect of all this. You must realize that for a few moments a great and deadly fear was implanted in the minds of men. Fear of the unknown. Fear of distant worlds and stronger beings. We all know now that the universe is peopled by beings more terrible than ourselves, and no man living will forget that fear. It will find its way into song and story.

“You see, Rhode, we know for a certainty that to survive we must put an end to wars of man against man. We have come to the end of that particular era. The volcano, now five thousand feet high, is a living memorial to the narrowness of our escape. From now on all nations will begin to forget the narrow boundaries of nationalism and begin to think of the human race as a unit. Our combined resources will bring the stars closer.”

The fervor of his tone had increased as he had spoken, and Martin Rhode was infected by his enthusiasm. For the first time, the dream seemed possible.

Rider sighed. “But you’ve got to do more than to listen to an old man mumble his dreams, Rhode. It is stupid for me to try to make the gesture of thanking you in the name of humanity. Your own continued existence is your reward. I’ve lined up a series of conferences with the top technologists of all nations. They intend to pick your brains, Rhode, and find out just a little bit about the power crystals.”

Martin felt sharp disappointment. There was something else...

Rider laughed. “You don’t have a poker face, my boy. And I guess I’m teasing you a little. Those conferences will start the day after tomorrow. In the meantime I took the liberty of sending for a... a certain young woman. She should be here by now.”

Martin turned quickly toward the elevator, then regained control of himself, turned back and said, “Thank you, sir.”

But Stanford Rider had already forgotten his presence. The lean man was standing, his hands locked behind him, looking out over the fair land where he and all his people could once again walk free and unafraid in the light of the sun.