The Mole Pirate

IX

The silence was ear-cracking. Silence, in the normal world, is a compound of minute noises, each one of which contributes to a blended impression of quiet Here there was an absolute absence of sound. It was startling. It was bewildering. There was constantly a shocked impression of one's own deafness.

Stranger still, of course, was the landscape. It was like a madman's dream. The sun was visible, to be sure, but as a ball of red so dark that it was almost purple. The unearthly light which filled this place was far down the scale, nearly in the infra-red. It was the darkest tint the human eye could see. In it, the trees were more than merely translucent.

Jack was seeing by rays which normally are blanketed out by the visible spectrum. The trees seemed so tenuous, so infinitely fragile that their immobility was not credible even when Jack saw it. And their branches went away to threads and their foliage stopped so little of the strange faint light that it seemed that overhead there was only the faintest of mist. Jack saw stars shining dully in an almost-black sky.

He had stopped, rather grimly, to orient himself. Now he essayed to move. And the ungainly things strapped to his feet were fast in the earth below him. That earth seemed vapour, to be sure. But there was radioactive paint upon these weird earth-shoes. That worked the miracle.

The flying alpha particles from that paint bombarded the dematerialized substance which alone in the world was real to Jack. The effect was 'that of temporary, partial materialization, so that the substance of the earth-shoes was partly 'real' in both states of matter.

Yet it was only partly 'real' so that it could still penetrate reality. But it did so slowly. Jack's earth-shoes had sunk a little, a very little, into the ground. But they would rise no more easily than they sank.

He felt a flash of panic, as a man might be expected to feel with a quicksand tugging at his legs. Then he forced himself to coolness. His feet had sunk perhaps six inches into the earth. He could not lift them. But he could slide them forward. He did. And the turned-up toes of the snowshoes helped, and a little later he strode forward through the impossible, a man walking upon a cloud, through shadows, beneath a sky and sun which did not seem of earth. He walked and moved, in fact, upon a world which had become itself a ghost in a universe that was phantom.

It was nightmarish, of course. It was worse than any nightmare. It was like insanity come true. And always, if he stood still, he would sink into the nightmare and strangle in the impalpable cloud which was the earth itself, and at last fall dizzily, twisting a little, down into the eternal fires which burned sullenly perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred miles below him. But to think of that caused vertigo.

Jack headed east, holding a tight leash upon himself lest the panic which always clawed at him should seize his brain. There would be human beings to eastward. True, he would be a ghost to them, and they to him, but still - He forced himself to note all things with a careful attention. That way would come accustomedness.

He suddenly realized that there were no smells in this strange universe. Again, like sounds, a man is normally unaware of tiny odours in the air he breathes. But their absence was strange. The air seemed strangely flat. It had the insipid flavour of boiled and hence tasteless water.

Then he saw something moving. His heart leaped for ah instant. But this moving thing was itself a shadow. He watched it intently. It was a rabbit. He could look through its flesh and see the distinctly articulated, phantom bones within its mistlike body. Strangely, it seemed to see him, too. It leaped madly away. And Jack realized that, just as the rabbit seemed ghostlike to him, he would seem a ghost to it. Even more of a wraith and less visible, actually, because of the brighter light in the world of reality, whereby objects behind his no longer 'material' body would be so much more distinct.

He went on, without hope, but refusing to give way until he must. In this world of impalpable things there was no solid space on which he might rest. These was no food he could eat. There was no water he could lift to his lips or swallow. And he knew all this and trudged doggedly eastward, for no conceivable reason, for hour after hour. If he had any reason for his travail, it was that he could die without yielding to the panic Durran undoubtedly expected of him.

It was a ghastly journey. The earth-shoes upon his feet, clumsy and unaccustomed; the unearthly reddish light about him; the vaporous-seeming surface on which he walked; the knowledge of and the insistent nagging feeling of an abyss below him. He had no faintest idea of attaining to safety by this exertion. He knew the conditions under which hope might exist, and they were practically impossible. Without food or water or rest, with no means of communicating with any human being, with his loudest shout in the ear of a man but the faintest thread of a whisper - because he was a ghost - A ghost!

Once he passed through a tiny country village. He saw ghosts about him, living in phantom houses, engaged in unreal tasks. He was unseen by humans, but dogs barked at him, frightened, terrified, the hackles at the top of their necks raised and bristling. Their barks were the faintest of whispers. He went on because their uproar made a phantom baby wake and wail soundlessly.

On - on.

He strode on for hours, desperately, watching without hope for something which might give hope. The dark-eyed, nearly purple, sun sank low. He had emerged from the phantom woods long since and now plodded across a vaporous open space which was featureless and unmeaning. The cloudiness rose above his earth-shoes, now. It was probably a growing crop of wheat or rye, unseeable save as mist. Ever and again he turned to look his last upon the sun. And very suddenly it vanished and all this unreal world was dark.

There were infinitely faint reddish lights in the sky overhead - stars. He stood upon a vapour that he could not see and that was not tangible to his hands. In all the world there was/riot one solid thing besides his body and the ungainly objects upon his feet. He was exhausted. He was weak with hunger and thirst and half mad with the knowledge of doom upon him and that impending drop down into the smouldering fires that burn eternally at the centre of the earth.

Two small red glows, like fireflies, swept through the blackness from a spot to the right of him. They moved almost before him and vanished abruptly. He plodded on. Two others. They were nearer. Again they vanished when before him. A curious tail of nickering flame seemed to follow them. He was almost too weary even to be curious. But somewhere in his brain a voice said: 'Motor cars. That tail of flame is the exhaust. It's hot enough to give off infra-red, and that's what you see by.'

He plodded on. Sooner or later he would stagger from the exhaustion that crept upon him. His muscles would refuse to obey him. He would stumble. He would fall -

Then he saw a row of dim red specks. They did not move. He regarded them dully. They would be the electric bulbs of a filling-station sign. He turned and moved drearily toward them. He would die, at least, near human beings he could not even signal to. He was very tired indeed. Presently the dim red specks stretched in the three sides of a rectangle above his head. That was the roof of the service cover. And the lights were probably very bright ones, because he made out very faintly indeed the phantom of the filling station itself. He walked through the walls of that phantom. A brighter reddish glow shone there - a round ring of light. No; two round rings of light. He regarded them apathetically. He was too tired to think clearly. He found himself reaching out his hand. He touched one of the rings of light. It burned him. It was, actually, the gasoline burner of a hot-dog boiler.

'Curious,' he said dully to himself. 'In theory, if it burned me, I must have affected the flame. And if there is a man near by - but there must be - I could signal to him if we both knew dots and dashes.'

Then he shrugged hopelessly. His finger hurt. It was severely scorched, but there was not enough light to see. He made a helpless gesture with his scorched hand - and the burned finger touched something solid.

For a moment he was dazed. Sheer shock made him dizzy. He touched the thing again. It was hot and scorched his burned finger. It was impalpable to the unburned ones.

Jack gasped. 'I feel - I feel a stove!'

Then he panted to himself, all alone in the unthinkable universe of his own discovery.

'Radioactivity knocks some of the atoms loose from their co-ordination. Fire, heat, ought to do the same thing. Especially if it caused chemical change - as it does when it scorches my skin. Heat demagnetizes steel, too. It ought to -it ought to materialize -

He held his hand savagely to the flame. It was agony. It was torment. He scorched it all over, going sick from pain. And then he groped. He felt a wall. He fumbled, and fumbled -

The forty-eight hours given to the City of New York would expire at four p.m. At a little after three, Jack got rather stiffly out of a motorcycle side car at the isolated spot in New Jersey where the city's ransom was to be paid. The State trooper who'd brought him roared his machine away. Gail's father nodded to Jack, his face grey and drawn.

'I heard you were released,' he said jerkily, 'and that Gail was all right when you were turned loose.'

'She was all right,' said Jack composedly. 'But I wasn't turned loose in the way you mean. You're here to deliver the city's ransom?'

Kennedy nodded and licked his lips. 'I asked for the job,' he said desperately. 'I hope to see Gail and make terms with Durran for her release, too, you see.'

'He'll ask,' said Jack, 'for one of the new earth-ships. That's the price. I'm fairly sure.'

'He blew up four of them yesterday,' said Kennedy bitterly. 'They couldn't be moved as you wired they had to be. One was got away. He'll get the rest to-morrow, probably.'

Jack nodded. He got out a cigarette and lighted it. His fingers quivered like tuning forks.

'Listen!' he said suddenly.

He told Gail's father just how Gail had desperately bought his life by telling where the new earth-ships were being built.' He told how Durran had cheated on the contract, amusedly, while holding to the strict letter of his agreement. He told of his horrible journey in that world which was not reality, and of the accidental discovery that the scorching of his own flesh would destroy the effect of the force field upon it, just as heat will destroy the magnetism of a bar of steel.

'I scorched my hand pretty thoroughly,' he finished, 'and felt around. I found the desk where the hot-dog man balanced up accounts. I found his pencil and wrote a message to him, telling who I was and how I came to be there. Then I attracted his attention by pounding his inkwell on the top of his desk.'

'Luckily, he wasn't just superstitious. He tried to find out what was happening. The radio broadcast had told about my being carried away in the Mole. The hot-dog man took a chance. He put his stove down on the floor, and I balanced myself on one of those earth-shoes and scorched the soles of my own leather shoes. I tried them. And the heat had re-materialized the bottom layer of the leather.

'I could stand on the floor of the hot-dog stand! At last I had some hope to cling to!

'Then I scorched the earth-shoes, too. The hot-dog man could see them, then. And they wouldn't sink through the floor at all. He believed me. I tore off bits of canvas that had been scorched. He could see them, too, and so could I. He put one over his ear as I'd told him to, in writing. One side was rematerialized by the heat. The other wasn't quite scorched and was real to me.

'I shouted at it. My voice vibrated my side of the cloth, and that made his side vibrate. In a little while he made me hear him, too, in the same way. We had to scream at each other, though with the hand I'd scorched I could touch him. It nearly scared him to death the first time I did it. Then he telephoned for me. And I lay down on the earth-shoes on the floor, and waited. The brought a force-field outfit and re-materialized me.

'I nearly keeled over when I saw the world actual about me again.'

Kennedy listened. He had to. But his thoughts were with Gail.

'But Gail-'

'Look at my hands.' said Jack jerkily. He held them out. They quivered. 'I found out something Durran doesn't know. It's a show-down. Either we get Gail back when Durran turns up, or - there's no hope for her at all.'

'What's the matter?'

'Durran's doomed,' said Jack unsteadily. 'He doesn't know it. I do. He told me he was having to run the sustaining screws ten revolutions a minute faster than at the beginning. And Gail's in the Mole. You see what that means?'

'No. What's happened?'

'The sustaining screws hold the Mole up,' replied Jack, puffing nervously, 'because they're coated with thorium. If it wasn't for that and their movement, the ship would drop like a stone. And the thorium plating is wearing off. Durran doesn't realize it, but the Mole's travelled a long way. When he's run it a certain time longer, so much of the plating will have worn off that no speed will enable the sustaining screws to hold the ship up. So we've got to get Gail out of the Mole to-day.' His eyes met the other's evenly.

Kennedy's face was grey and drawn. It went greyer yet. 'What are you going to do?'

'Ransom her,' replied Jack. 'If Durran sees me here, he won't go away leaving me alive. I hope he'll be curious enough to ask me how I escaped. Then I can talk to him. Did you see a plane sweep low across this place early this morning?'

Kennedy shook his head.

'It was supposed to dust the ground all about here,' said Jack jerkily. 'Like they dust crops by plane. That's part of the trick. I have the rest in my pocket. Where's the ransom for New York?'

Kennedy gestured toward half a dozen suitcases. 'Full of currency,' he said indifferently. 'State troopers all around us in a ring a couple of miles across. Durran's been looking over the place, we may be sure. He's probably watching us now.'

Jack nodded. He flung his cigarette away and lighted another.

'I've only about as long as it takes Durran to get here,' he said unsteadily, 'before I get bumped off. I'm hoping - I'm praying I get Gail dear. Only one chance, and that a thin one. But Durran goes, and I think I go with him.'

'But what are you going to do?' demanded Kennedy desperately. 'What -' Then he stopped.

The Mole, a phantom, was rising out of the ground not a dozen yards away. It came fully into view, and the whitish, eerie light of the force field played upon it, diminishing. As it diminished, the Mole solidified. And as it solidified the screws found the earth in which they worked becoming more and more solid and they slowed and then finally stopped for the increased resistance.

The door opened. The ugly muzzle of a machine gun peered out.

'I've scouted pretty thoroughly,' said the voice of Durran harshly, 'and there's no trap here. I hope you didn't plan to have me bombed from the air, Kennedy. I've got your daughter with me.'

'N-no,' said Kennedy. He swallowed. 'I - I arranged to meet you so I could make terms for her ransom. Can I speak to her?'

A pause.

Durran laughed. 'Why not? Go out, my dear, and talk to him. I can take you back any time I please -'

His voice broke off short. He'd recognized Jack.

'Hello, Durran,' said Jack coolly. 'You didn't like the last bargain I made with you. But it still stands as an offered ransom for Gail.'

Gail stepped out of the Mole, deathly white, and suddenly ran into her father's arms. She sobbed in sheer relief as she dung to him. 'Jack isn't dead!'

'Talk to you later, Gail,' said Jack evenly. 'I'm going to make a bargain for you to stay with your father.'

Durran found his voice again. 'The devil!' he said, shaken. 'I thought you were roasted long ago, Hill! I'll make sure you're dead before I leave this time!'

'Perhaps," said Jack. 'I offered you information, while I was in the Mole, in exchange for Gail's safety. Kill me and you don't get it. It's about - this.'

He took a flat package, about the size of a tobacco tin, out of his pocket. The ugly muzzle of the machine gun swung and covered him accurately.

You're covered,' said Durran. 'What's the trick?'

'You can't dematerialize within a certain distance of one of these contrivances,' said Jack. 'They're being turned out in quantity. The result is that if you materialize anywhere these things have been planted, you can't get away and are subject to attack. I'll trade full information, and come with you to give it, for Gail's release. Maybe you can beat them. I doubt it. But you can work out a detector for them, if you know how they work.'

'That's impossible!' snapped Durran.

'So is the Mole.' submitted Jack. 'You can't dematerialize your ship right now. Isn't the secret of that trick worth Gail's release?'

A pause.

Durran's voice sounded suspidous. 'If it's true. That might be a bomb, though. You stay where you are. I'm going to test it out. This machine gun stays trained on you. I turn on the force field. If you lie, I can materialize again fast enough to kill you.'

'But you can't dematerialize,' said Jack. He smiled faintly. 'You're inside the range of this thing.'

Only a grunt came from inside the Mole. Something rumbled within. The sustaining screws stirred. Instantly the ship flashed into the state of co-ordinated atoms, they would whir swiftly, looking like the most tenuous of froth but sustaining the whole weight of the earth-ship.

'If you dare move,5 said Durran harshly, 'I'll kill all three of you!'

Then the Mole flared with eerie, whitish light. It became a phantom.

And it dropped with a headlong swiftness at one and the same instant. One instant there was the Mole, all solid, riveted, bullet-scarred plates of steel. Next instant there was a glowing outline which fell as it glowed. Then there was nothing. No phantom. No outline. Nothing.

Jack smiled very, very faintly. 'I think,' he said softly, 'that's that!'

Gail stared at him. 'Jack! Where's the Mole?

Jack said rather grimly: 'The thorium plating on the sustaining screws has been wearing thin. So this morning I had a plane fly low over this place Durran had appointed. It dusted all the top of the ground with crystals of phosphoric acid. There's been rain lately, and the ground is moist. The acid made a strong solution in all the top soil. And the Mole came swimming through that soil. As long as it was de-materialized, of course, the acid did nothing. But when the Mole materialized, the phosphoric acid dissolved off the remaining thin plating of thorium from the screws. And I persuaded Durran to dematerialize - and there was nothing to hold the ship up. It fell through earth and stone. It's still falling. We'll never see Durran again.'

Gail said, absurdly: 'Jack! The Mole you built! It's gone!'

'Yes,' said Jack. 'And I expected to be in it. I was sure Durran would make me come in, but he was afraid that "contrivance" was a bomb. It was, and I've another in my pocket. With you outside of the Mole and me inside with two bombs - I told your father Durran would go. He - had to be finished.'

But he looked rather sick. The Mole would still be falling - toward those smouldering internal fires to which Durran had doomed him once.

Then, quite suddenly, the ground trembled. A distant, muted, racking sound came from far, far underground. It ceased.

'That - that ends it,' said Jack. 'Durran knew what he was falling to. He was clever. He probably even figured out what I did. So be blew up the ship rather than wait. I'm rather glad of that.'

Silence! Little rustling noises of leaves and grass in the wind.

Then Kennedy said fiercely: 'That's done with, then! Durran's finished! And we'll get back to work! You, Jack, you'll be needed to explain that earth-plane idea. We'll have under-ocean passenger service to Europe within a year. We'll have fleets of earth-planes moving through solidity, safer than aeroplanes or ships could be. And we'll be mining ten and twenty miles deep with those mine cages you talked about -'

But Gail let go of her father's hands. She walked over to Jack and into his arms.

'My father thinks you've made good, Jack,' she told him. 'Now, you tell him there's something very important to be attended to before you do any more work on those nasty earth-ships!'

Jack pressed her close.

'Yes; there is. Do you mind attending a wedding this afternoon, sir?' he asked Kennedy.

'Not at all,' replied Kennedy with a grimace. 'You two stay here a moment while I get those State police. Watch these bags, if you can. The ransom for New York is in them. It's got to be taken back.'