Death Quotient and Other Stories Read online

  “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 i
nstallation, 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.