4
"But see here," I said, "did they mention the Martian, Molo, at all?"
"They were discussing Molo before you arrived," Grantline told us.
We had drawn back from the doorway. The conference, with the deadthing removed, was proceeding. Snap and I had momentarily forgottenAnita and Venza; but now we were in a panic to get back to the RedSpark.
"But you can't go," said Grantline. "Brayley ordered you here. He'llwant to see you in a moment."
"Well, why doesn't he see us now?" Snap protested. "I'm not going tocool myself off sitting here."
"Oh yes, you are."
Grantline sent word to Brayley that we were here. In a moment theanswer came. We were to wait a short time; he would want to see us.
We swiftly told Grantline what had happened at the Red Spark, andfound that already he knew. Francis had relayed it to the conference,and Halsey was in constant communication with the officials here.
"Then what is happening?" I demanded. "Where are the girls? Has Halseyheard from them?"
Again Grantline went to a nearby room.
"Anita sent a message," he said, when he returned. "They are withMolo. Halsey is ordering a squad of men to be ready."
Grantline told us what had been happening in the Red Spark. Anita andVenza, simulating drunkenness with a skill for acting which I knewboth of them possessed, had joined Molo's party. Perhaps if Meka hadbeen there she would have seen through them.
But Molo did not. And they have since told me that the Martian himselfwas far from sober, although he was probably not aware of it. Heyielded to their demands to leave the restaurant with him. He wanted,as we know, to leave unobtrusively; and Venza threatened a sceneunless she could go.
He took them, leaving openly in a public fare-car. Doubtless he atfirst intended to de-rail them somewhere, but they convinced him thathe was not being followed. Twice he used his detector, and Anita andHalsey were clever enough to throw off their rays in time to avoid it.Then Halsey lost connection with the fleeing car, and after that Molochanged his mind about ditching the girls.
"But where are they now?" I demanded.
"You," said Grantline sternly, "are out of it. Do you think thatHalsey, under Brayley's orders, will neglect any chance to find outwhere Molo is hiding? Something is about to happen. This conference iswrestling with it. In Grebhar and Ferrok-Shahn they're striving tofind out what it is. Something impending _now_. Helios are pouring inhere from Venus and Mars. They're mobilizing their spaceships, just aswe are."
Grantline at last was letting out all his apprehensions on us, withthis burst. "Halsey didn't tell you that the entire resources of hisorganization are out upon this thing tonight. Here at this conclavethere's a room of information-sorters. That's just where I came from amoment ago. Every country on our Earth is making ready--for what,nobody knows!
"He's had two fragmentary calls from Anita. He has a hundred men readyto rush to their aid, and to capture Molo's lair. He expects anothermessage from Anita any moment. This conference here knows everymovement that is being made, within ten or twenty seconds of itsmaking. Perhaps upon Anita and Venza the whole outcome of this thingmay hang."
We had no answer to that. "Do you know who Molo is? He's aninterplanetary pirate; his ship is the _Star-Streak_."
"Good Lord!"
We had heard of him. For five years past, a gray spaceship, with abase supposedly hidden in the Polar deserts of Mars, had beenterrorizing interplanetary shipping.
"They think," Grantline went on, "that Molo was cruising with hispirate ship. He has, as you know, a band of criminals drawn from allthe three worlds. There are about fifty of them, commanded by hissister and himself. We think that Molo encountered the three shipswhich that new planet sent out. The _Star-Streak_ was captured,perhaps destroyed. Molo and his band, joined with this new enemy, tosave themselves, and because they have been promised rewards."
"But why should these brains want their help?" Snap demanded.
"Wouldn't you say it was because, in Ferrok-Shahn, Grebhar and here inGreater New York, simultaneously tonight, something has to beaccomplished, something the brains themselves could not do? Molo andhis band know all three cities. How they landed here in Greater NewYork nobody knows; the enemy spaceship is 200,000 miles out. Obviouslythey came from it, landed secretly with some smaller ship somewhere onEarth and made their way here."
A buzzer sounded beside us. A voice commanded: "Grantline, bring GreggHaljan and Daniel Dean to room six at once."
* * * * *
In room six we stood before the War Secretary, who had arrived there amoment ahead of us.
"Ah, Haljan and Dean. I'm glad to see you."
He was still white and shaken. Beads of perspiration stood upon hisforehead. He mopped them off.
"I've just had a rather terrible experience." He did not suggest thatwe sit down. He went on crisply: "Grantline no doubt has told you ofwhat's going on. Disturbing, terrifying. Haljan, we have a ship beingrushed into commission tonight. You know her, the _Cometara_."
"I know her," I said.
"Quite so. She is taking off as soon as we can ready her. She willcarry about fifty men. Grantline is in charge of the armament and men.You, Dean, we want to handle her radio-helio."
"Right," said Snap.
"And you, Haljan, we can think of no one better to navigate her."
He waved away my appreciation. "Within a brief time we shall havethirty such ships in space. Mars and Venus also are mobilizing."
He stood up. "We feel, Haljan, that if anyone can handle the_Cometara_ with skill enough to combat this lurking enemy, it will beyou."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"We know that. The ship is leaving from the Tappan InterplanetaryStage shortly after dawn. When have you and Dean last slept?"
"Last night," we both said.
"Quite so. Then you need sleep now. I want you to go at once to theTappan Fieldhouse. The commander there will make you comfortable. Eat,and sleep if you can. We want you in good shape. You're to keep out ofthis night's activities here in the city; you understand?"
"Yes sir."
An orderly was approaching behind Brayley. "I'll be back in a moment,Rollins."
He shook hands with us. "I may not see you again before it's over.Good luck, lads. Grantline, they need you for a moment in the hall;something about electronic space weapons, further equipment for the_Cometara_. Then you'd better go to Tappan House too, and get somesleep."
We were dismissed. Snap and I regarded each other hesitantly. I saidimpulsively, "Mr. Brayley, Detective-Colonel Halsey is using twogirls."
"Yes, we're watching that, Haljan."
"They're the girls we're to marry," I added. "May we communicate withColonel Halsey?"
"Yes. Call him from here." He smiled wanly. "But keep out of it; weneed you at dawn."
The Tappan departure-stage was only a few miles up the Hudson; wecould get there in half an hour. It was now nearly trinight, halfwaybetween midnight and dawn. I had my portable audiphone and got Halseyat once.
"You Gregg?"
"Yes. They're through with us at the Conclave. Where is Anita?"
"We heard from her twice. I'm expecting...."
We could hear someone interrupting him. Then he came back. "Gregg?Molo took them somewhere. I didn't dare fling after them. He had hisdetector going, and Anita warned me not to try it. She had to stopconnection herself. God knows how she was able to whisper to me atall."
His voice, like Brayley's, had the ring of a man strained to thebreaking point. I could appreciate how Halsey must feel, forced toremain at his desk with its encircling banks of instruments; holdingall the network of his farflung activities centralized; hisdecisions, his commands in a hundred places almost simultaneously,while his body sat there inactive.
"Gregg, the girls must have arrived at Molo's place by now. If onlythey know where they are! I have lookouts throughout the city withintricate and complete connectin
g equipment. Gregg, I mustdisconnect."
"Colonel, give me Anita's frequency. Maybe Snap or I can pick up themessage."
He named the oscillating frequency, then disconnected.
"Try that frequency," Snap suggested. "We've got to do something."
The door-slide opened suddenly and an orderly appeared. "Haljan?"
"Get the hell away," roared Snap. "We've had our orders; we don't wantany from you."
"Gregg Haljan and Daniel Dean are paged on the mirrors."
Someone in the city wanted us; our names were appearing on the variousmirror-grids publicly displayed throughout the city in the hope thatwe would answer.
"That's different," said Snap. "Answer it for us, that's a goodfellow. We're busy."
"It must be important," the orderly insisted. "The caller registered afee at the Search Bureau; that's how they located you here. He paidthe highest fee to search you. An emergency call."
It was against the law to invoke the services of the Search Bureauunless based upon actual impending danger. "We'll take it," I said.
"Come with me." He turned to the left and down the corridor.
We hastened with him to a corridor cubby. Upon the audiphone there Iwas at once connected with a voice, and an anxious man's face with atwo-day growth upon it.
"Haljan! Thank God you answered. This is Dud Ardley. Me and Shac arehere. Listen, this is the lower cellar corridor, Lateral 3, underBroadway. Me and Shac just have seen your girls down here."
News of Anita and Venza! I could see in the mirror-image, behind Dud'shead the outlines of the little public cubby from which he wascalling. He and his brother, on some illicit errand of their own inEast Side lower Manhattan, had seen figures alighting from afare-car. They had caught a glimpse of the faces of Anita and Venza.The girls were hooded and cloaked; a hooded man was with them. Thefare-car quickly rolled away, and the hooded figures, suddenlybecoming invisible within their magnetic cloaks, had vanished.
"S'elp me, we couldn't do nothin'. You know we take no chances withthe police by carryin' cylinders. So I paged you in a hurry."
"Dud, that's damn nice of you. Where are you now? Tell me again."
The Ardleys, knowing nothing of the events of this night, supposedthat the girls were being abducted, and decided I should be informed.
"Damn right, Dud. We'll come at once. You two wait for us?"
"Sure. If you got instruments, maybe we can track 'em. It wasn't aquarter of a mile from here, over toward the river. Plenty of rottendumps down there."
"Wait for us, Dud. We'll come in a rush."
I slammed shut the audiphone. Snap, beside me, had heard it all. Heshoved the astonished orderly out of the way.
"What's the nearest exit-route out of here?"
"To the city roof, sir. Up this incline."
We dashed up the spiral incline, through a low exit-port, and were inthe starlight of the city roof.
* * * * *
"Connect it, Gregg! You can't tell; her message might come over anyminute."
I tuned my coils to the seldom used oscillation frequency which Halseyhad told us Anita's transmitter was sending.
"Anything, Gregg?"
"No. Dead channel."
The air, in Anita's channel, was bafflingly silent.
We had been challenged by a roof-guard when we appeared from the upperport of the Conclave Hall; the city roof was not open to publictraffic. But with our identifications, he found us a single-seathand-tram, and started us southward on the deserted route.
It was a cloudless night, with stars like thickly-strewn diamonds onpurple velvet. The city roof lay glistening in the starlight. In mygreat-grandfather's time there had been no roof here; the open citywas exposed to all the inclement weather. But gradually the arcadesand overhead viaducts, cross balconies and catwalks which spanned thecanyon street between the giant buildings became a roof. It spread,now terraced and sloped to top the lofty buildings, like a greatrumpled sheet propped by the knees of sleeping giants. Some of theroof was of opaque alumite, dark patches, alternating with the greatglassite panes which in places admitted the daylight.
Our little tram sped along southward, wending its way over theterraces. Save for the guards and lookouts in their occasionalcubbies, and the air-traffic directors in their towers, we were aloneup here. The roof was tangled with air-pipes, line-wire conduits,aerials, arterial systems of the ventilating and lighting devices. Asfar as one could see the ventilators stood fronting the night breezelike listening ears. There were water tanks, great cross-bulkheads andflumes to handle the rain and snow. A few traffic towers maintainedorder in the overhead air-lanes. Their beacons shot up into the skywhen the passing lights marked the thinly-strewn trinight traffic.
We were stopped at intervals, but in each case were passed promptly.
"Nothing yet, Gregg?"
"No."
Anita's channel remained empty. It was, I suppose, no more than tenminutes during which we sped south along the grotesque maze of theroof; but to us it was an eternity. If only some message would come!
"I'll pull up here."
"Yes."
I gathered up my little audiphone, thrust it under my dark flowingcloak. If only our cloaks were magnetic!
We leaped from our car. "In a rush, Haljan?" asked a guard.
"That's us. Orders from Mr. Brayley."
We left him and plunged into a descending automatic lift. A drop of athousand feet; we shot downward past all the deserted levels, past theground-level, the undersurface transportation lanes, the sub-rivertubes, the sub-cellar, down to the very bottom of the city.
"Come on, Gregg. Two segments from here."
We advanced at a run. At this hour of night, hardly a pedestrian wasin evidence. It was an arched vaulted corridor, almost a tunnel, dimlyblue-lit with short lengths of fluorescent tubes at intervals on theceiling. For all the vaunted mechanisms of our time, the air here washeavy and fetid. Moisture dripped from the concrete roof. It lay onthe metal pavement of the ground; the smell of it was dank, tomb-like.
There were frequent cross-tunnels. We turned eastward into one ofthem. For a segment there were the lower entrances to the cellars ofthe giant buildings overhead. We passed a place where thetunnel-corridor widened into a great underground plaza. The sewerageand wire-pipes lay like tangled pythons on its floor. Half across it,by the glow of temporary lights strung on a cable, a group ofrepairmen were working. We passed them, headed in to where the tunnelnarrowed again and there were now occasional cubby entrances tounderground dwellings.
It was a rabbit warren from here to the river, haunted by criminalsand by miserable families, many of whom never saw the daylight forweeks at a time. The giant voices of the city hardly carried downhere, so that an oppressive silence hung upon everything.
"That next crossing, Gregg. They said they'd wait for us there."
Occasional escalators led upward. In advance of us was a narrowintersection. There were a few lights in the bullseyes of thesubterranean dwelling rooms, but most of them were dark.
"Easy, Snap. Not so fast."
I pulled Snap to a walk. We edged over against the tunnel side. We hadpassed a small lighted audiphone cubby, evidently the one from whichDud and Shac had paged us. They should have been here waiting; butthere was nothing but the empty, gloomy tunnels.
"Something is coming!" Snap clutched at me; we drew our cloaks aroundus and waited in a shadowed recess. Down a side incline, a segmentbehind us, a small automatic food truck came lurching. It pulled up atan arcade entrance. Its driver slid the portals, deposited his casesof food, locked the panel after him; and in a moment he and his truckwere gone up the incline.
We heard, in the ensuing silence, a low groan near at hand; thenabruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two darkfigures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow wherethe mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared into the tunnelwall.
We bent over the figures of two men
. They lay together, one half uponthe other, black-garbed figures with white, staring faces. Onetwitched a little and then lay still.
They were Shac and Dud Ardley.
"Murdered, Gregg! Good Lord!"
Both were dead, but we could see no marks on either of them.
I found my wits. "Snap, we can't stand like this wholly visible."
I pulled Snap away. We darted a few feet. The light of the tunnelintersection was directly over us. "Not here, Snap! Run!"
Under the curving vacuum tube a little further along, we foundshelter. Snap murmured: "The girls went past here. But which way,Gregg?"
As though I knew!
I felt at that moment, under the shirt against my skin, the anode ofmy audiphone tingling. A receiving signal! In the gloom, I could seeSnap's white face as he watched me bring it out.
We heard a tiny microphonic voice, Anita's voice.
"Colonel Halsey. Yes I have the location. Lafayette 4--East corridor,lowest level. A descending entrance. Don't you speak again; I've onlya minute! Venza safe--but send help. Something we don't understand--astrange mechanism here."
Then Halsey's interrupting voice. "Anita, escape! You and Venza!"
"We can't. They've got us!"
"I'm sending men. They'll be there in ten minutes."
"Ten minutes will be too late. Molo is...."
It seemed that we heard her scream; then the waves blurred and died.
Lafayette 4--East corridor, lowest level. "Snap, that's here! Adescending entrance."
We stood back against the great curving side of the postal vacuumtube. Within it I heard the hiss and clank as a mail cylinder flashedpast. Halsey's secret orders must be going out now. His men nearestthis place would come in a rush. But Anita said that would be toolate.
Snap and I were frantically searching. Somewhere here was an entranceto Molo's lair. It seemed in the silence that Anita's scream was stillringing in my ears. Had it been entirely from the instrument, or werewe so close that we had heard its distant echoes?
"Gregg, help me." Snap was tugging at a horizontal door-slide, like atrap in the tunnel floor, partly under the vacuum tube. "Stuck!" hegasped.
It yielded with our efforts. It slid aside. Steps led downward intoblackness. We plunged in, caution gone from us. The steps went downsome twenty feet; we were in another smaller corridor. It was vaguelylighted by a glow from somewhere, and as my pupils expanded, I couldsee this was a shabby alley, opening ahead into a winding passage withthe slide-port above us like its back gate. A warren of cubbies washere, a little sequestered segment of disreputable dwellings.
We stood peering, listening. "Shall I try the eavesdropper, Gregg?"
"Yes. No, wait!" I thought I heard distant sounds.
"Voices, Snap. Listen."
More than voices. A thud: footsteps running. A commotion, back in thiswarren, within a hundred feet of us.
"This way," I murmured.
We plunged into a black gash. There was a glow of light, a glassitepane in a house wall nearby. The commotion was louder, and under itnow we heard a vague humming: something electrical. It was anindescribably weird sound, like nothing I had ever heard before.
Snap clutched at me. "In here, but where is the accursed door?"
There was a glassite pane, but we could find no door. In our hands weheld small electronic bolt-cylinders, short-range weapons.
The hum and hissing was louder. It seemed to throb within us, asthough vibration were communicating to every fiber of our bodies.
Light was streaming through the glassite pane, and we glimpsed theinterior of the room. The light now came from a strange mechanism setin the center of the metal cubby. I caught only an instant's glimpseof it, a round thing of coils and wires. The metal floor of the roomwas cut away, exposing the gray rock of Manhattan Island. And againstthe rock, in a ten-foot circle, a series of discs were contacted, withwires leading from them to the central coils.
The whole was glowing with opalescent light. It was dazzling,blinding. Within in it the goggled figure of Molo was moving,adjusting the contacts. He stooped. He straightened, drew back fromthe light.
Only an instant's glimpse, but we saw the girls, crouching with blackbandages on their eyes. Meka, goggled like her brother, was holdingthem. A tall shape carrying a round black box darted through the lightand ran. Molo leaped for the girls; the hum had mounted to a wildelectrical scream. Molo flung his sister back out of the light.
They all vanished. There was nothing but the light, and the mountingdynamic scream.
Beside me, Snap was pounding on the glassite panel. I joined him.Everything was dreamlike, blurring as though unconsciousness was uponme.
Where was Snap? Gone? Then I saw him nearby. He had found a door, butit wouldn't yield. I saw his arm go up in a gesture to me.
He ran; I found myself running after him, but I stumbled and fell.Then over me the scream burst into a great roar of sound. It seemed sointense, so gigantic a sound that it must ring around the world.
And the light burst with an exploding puff. The black metal cubbywalls seemed to melt like phantoms in a dream. A titan's blowtorch,the opalescent light shot upward, a circular ten-foot beam, eating itsway through all the city levels as though they were paper, up throughthe city roof.
Molo's cubby was gone. His mechanism was eaten by the light anddestroyed. There was only this motionless, upstanding beam, contactedhere with the Earth, streaming like an opalescent sword into thestarry sky.