The Menace From Earth ssc (26 page)

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McClintock was twiddling the selector switch, listening in. Suddenly he snapped, "Someone is asleep!"

Reynolds checked the number.

"Of course, that's the twins' room; they take turns. You may hear snores in 21 and 30 and 8 and 19. It's okay; they're off watch."

"Well, all right." MacClintock seemed annoyed. Reynolds bent back to his list. Shortly McClintock snorted, "Who's in room 12?"

"Uh? Wait — that's Norman Johnson, Cleveland."

"You mean he's on watch?"

"Yes." 'Reynolds could hear the boy's asthmatic breathing, felt relieved.

"He's asleep!"

'"No, he's not."

But McClintock was rushing down the corridor. Reynolds took after him; Hammond and Hanby followed. Reynolds caught up as McClintock burst into room 12. Norman was sprawled in a chair, eyes closed in his habitual attitude.

McClintock rushed up, slapped him. "Wake up!" Reynolds grabbed McClintock. "You bloody fool!" Norman opened his eyes, then burst into tears. "It's
gone!
"

"Steady, Norman. It's all right."

"No, no! It's gone — and my mammy's gone with it!"

McClintock snapped, "Concentrate, boy! Get back on it!"

Reynolds turned on him. "Get out. Get out before I punch you."

Hanby and Hammond were in the door; the General cut in with a hoarse whisper, "Pipe down, Doctor, bring the boy."

Back at the board the outside light was flashing. Hanby took the call while Reynolds tried to quiet the boy. Hanby 'listened gravely, then said, "He's right. Cleveland just got it."

MacClintock snapped, "He went to sleep. He ought to be shot."

"Shut up," said Hanby.

"But —"

Reynolds said, "any others, General?"

"Why would there be?"

"All this racket. It may have disturbed a dozen of them."

"Oh, we'll see." He called Washington again. Presently he sighed. "No, just Cleveland. We were lucky."

"General," McClintock insisted, "he was asleep."

Hanby looked at him. "Sir, you may be the President's deputy but you yourself have no military authority. Off my post."

"But I am directed by the President to —"

"Off my post, sir! Go back to Washington. Or to Cleveland." McClintock looked dumbfounded. Hanby added, "You're worse than bad — you're a fool."

"The President will hear of this."

"Blunder again and the President won't live that long. Get out."

By nightfall the situation was rapidly getting worse.

Twenty-seven cities were still threatened and Reynolds was losing operators faster than bombs were being found. Even-Money Karsch would not relieve when awakened. "See that?" he said, rolling dice. "Cold as a well-digger's feet. I'm through." After that Reynolds tested each one who was about to relieve, found that some were tired beyond the power of short sleep to restore them — they were "cold."

By midnight there were eighteen operators for nineteen cities. The twins had fearfully split up; it had worked.

Mrs. Wilkins was holding both Washington and Baltimore; she had taken Baltimore when he had no one to relieve there.

But now he had no one for relief anywhere and three operators — Nelson, Two-Gun and Grandma Wilkins — had had no rest. He was too fagged to worry; he simply knew that whenever one of them reached his limit, the United States would lose a city. The panic had resumed after the bombing of Cleveland; roads again were choked. The disorder made harder the search for bombs. But there was nothing he could do. Mrs. Ekstein still complained about her sight but kept at it. Harry the newsboy had had no luck with Milwaukee, but there was no use shifting him; other cities were "dark" to him. During the night Mrs. Ekstein pointed to the bomb in Houston. It was, she said, in a box underground. A coffin? Yes, there was a headstone; she was unable to read the name.

Thus, many recent dead in Houston were disturbed. But it was nine Sunday morning before Reynolds went to tell Mary Gifford that she could rest — or relieve for Wilmington, if she felt up to it. He found her collapsed and lifted her onto the bed, wondering if she had known the Houston bomb was found.

Eleven cities now and eight people. Grandma Wilkins held four cities. No one else had been able to double up. Reynolds thought dully that it was a miracle that they had been able to last at all; it surpassed enormously the best test performance.

Hammond looked up as he returned. "Make any changes?"

"No. The Gifford kid is through. We'll lose half a dozen cities before this is over."

"Some of them must be damn near empty by now."

"I hope so. Any more bombs found?"

"Not yet. How do you feel, Doc?"

"Three weeks dead." Reynolds sat down wearily. He was wondering if he should wake some of those sleeping and test them again when he heard a noise below; he went to the stairwell. Up came an M.P. captain. "They said to bring her here." Reynolds looked at the woman with him. "Dorothy Brentano!"

"Dorothy Smith now."

He controlled his trembling and explained what was required. She nodded. "I figured that out on the plane. Got a pencil? Take this: St. Louis — a river warehouse with a sign reading 'Bartlett & Sons, Jobbers.' Look in the loft. And Houston — no, they got that one. Baltimore — it's in a ship at the docks, the S.S.
Gold Coast
. What other cities? I've wasted time feeling around where there was nothing to find."

Reynolds was already shouting for Washington to answer.

Grandma Wilkins was last to be relieved; Dorothy located one in the Potomac — and Mrs. Wilkins told her sharply to keep trying. There were four bombs in Washington, which Mrs. Wilkins had known all along. Dorothy found them in eleven minutes.

Three hours later Reynolds showed up in the club mess-room, not having been able to sleep. Several of his people were eating and listening to the radio blast about our raid on Russia. He gave it a wide berth; they could blast Omsk and Tomsk and Minsk and Pinsk; today he didn't care. He was sipping milk and thinking that he would never drink coffee again when Captain Mikeler bent over his table.

"The General wants you. Hurry!"

"Why?"

"I said, 'Hurry!' Where's Grandma Wilkins — oh I see her. Who is Mrs. Dorothy Smith?"

Reynolds looked around. "She's with Mrs. Wilkins."

Mikeler rushed them to Hanby's office. Hanby merely said, "Sit over there. And you ladies, too. Stay in focus."

Reynolds found himself looking into a television screen at the President of the United States. He looked as weary as Reynolds felt, but he turned on his smile. "You are Doctor Reynolds?"

"Yes, Mr. President!"

"These ladies are Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Smith?"

"Yes, sir."

The President said quietly, "You three and your colleagues will be thanked by the Republic. And by me, for myself. But that must wait. Mrs. Smith, there are more bombs — in Russia. Could your strange gift find them there?"

"Why, I don't — I can try!"

"Mrs. Wilkins, could you set off those Russian bombs while they are still far away?"

Incredibly, she was still bright-eyed and chipper. "Why, Mr. President!"

"Can you?"

She got a far-away look. "Dorothy and I had better have a quiet room somewhere. And I'd like a pot of tea. A large pot."

He judged that the Valley was hotter than usual — but, then, it usually was. Imperial Valley was a natural hothouse, two hundred and fifty feet below sea level, diked from the Pacific Ocean by the mountains back of San Diego, protected from the Gulf of Baja California by high ground on the south. On the east, the Chocolate Mountains walled off the rushing Colorado River.

He parked his car outside the. Barbara Worth Hotel in El Centro and went into the bar. "Scotch."

The bartender filled a shot glass, then set a glass of ice water beside it. "Thanks. Have one?"

"Don't mind if I do."

The customer sipped his drink, then picked up the chaser. "That's just the right amount of water in the right place. I've got hydrophobia."

"Huh?"

"I hate water. Darn near drowned when I was a kid. Afraid of it ever since."

"Water ain't fit to drink," the bartender agreed, "but I do like to swim."

"Not for me. That's why I like the Valley. They restrict the stuff to irrigation ditches, washbowls, bathtubs, and glasses. I always hate to go back to Los Angeles."

"If you're afraid of drowning," the barkeep answered, "you're better off in L.A. than in the Valley. We're below sea level here. Water all around us, higher than our heads. Suppose somebody pulled out the cork?"

"Go frighten your grandmother. The Coast Range is no cork."

"Earthquake."

"That's crazy. Earthquakes don't move mountain ranges."

"Well, it wouldn't necessarily take a quake. You've heard about the 1905 flood, when the Colorado River spilled over and formed the Salton Sea? But don't be too sure about quakes; valleys below sea level don't just grow —
something
has to cause them. The San Andreas Fault curls around this valley like a question mark. Just imagine the shake-up it must have taken to drop thousands of square miles below the level of the Pacific."

"Quit trying to get my goat. That happened thousands of years ago. Here." He laid a bill on the bar and left. Joykiller! A man like that shouldn't be tending bar.

The thermometer in the shaded doorway showed 118 degrees. The solid heat beat against him, smarting his eyes and drying his lungs, even while he remained on the covered sidewalk. His car, he knew, would be too hot to touch; he should have garaged it. He walked around the end of it and saw someone bending over the left hand door. He stopped. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The figure turned suddenly, showing pale, shifty eyes. He was dressed in a business suit, dirty and unpressed. He was tieless. His hands and nails, were dirty, but not with the dirt of work; the palms were uncalloused. A weak mouth spoiled features otherwise satisfactory. "No harm intended," he apologized. "I just wanted to read your registration slip. You're from Los Angeles. Give me a lift back to the city, pal."

The car owner ignored him and glanced around inside the automobile. "Just wanted to see where I was from, eh? Then why did you open the glove compartment? I ought to run you in." He looked past the vagrant at two uniformed deputy sheriffs sauntering down the other side of the street. "On your way, bum."

The man followed the glance, then faded swiftly away in the other direction. The car's owner climbed in, swearing at the heat, then checked the glove compartment. The flashlight was missing.

Checking it off to profit-and-loss, he headed for Brawley, fifteen miles north. The heat was oppressive, even for Imperial Valley. Earthquake weather, he said to himself, giving vent to the Californian's favorite superstition, then sternly denied it — that dumb fool gin peddler had put the idea in his mind. Just an ordinary Valley day, a little hotter, maybe.

-

His business took him to several outlying ranchos between Brawley and the Salton Sea. He was heading back toward the main highway on a worn gravel mat when the car began to waltz around as if he were driving over corduroy. He stopped the car, but the shaking continued, accompanied by a bass grumble.

Earthquake! He burst out of the car possessed only by the primal urge to get out in the open, to escape the swaying towers, the falling bricks. But there were no buildings here — nothing but open desert and irrigated fields.

He went back to the car, his stomach lurching to every following temblor. The right front tire was flat. Stone-punctured, he decided, when the car was bounced around by the first big shock.

Changing that tire almost broke his heart. He was faint from heat and exertion when he straightened up from it.

Another shock, not as heavy as the first, but heavy, panicked him again and he began to run, but he fell, tripped by the crazy galloping of the ground. He got up and went back to the car.

It had slumped drunkenly, the jack knocked over by the quake.

He wanted to abandon it, but the dust from the shocks had closed in around him like fog, without fog's blessed coolness. He knew he was several miles from town and doubted his ability to make it on foot.

He got to work, sweating and gasping. One hour and thirteen minutes after the initial shock the spare tire was in place. The ground still grumbled and shook from time to time. He resolved to drive slowly and thereby keep the car in control if another bad shock came along. The dust forced him to drive slowly, anyhow.

Moseying back toward the main highway, he was regaining his calm, when he became aware of a train in the distance. The roar increased, over the noise, of the car — an express train, he decided, plunging down the valley. The thought niggled at the back of his mind for a moment, until he realized why the sound seemed wrong: Trains should not race after a quake; they should creep along, the crew alert for spread rails.

The sound was recast in his mind.
Water!

Out of the nightmare depths of his subconscious, out of the fright of his childhood, he placed it. This was the sound after the darn broke, when, as a kid, he had been so nearly drowned. Water! A great wall of water, somewhere in the dust, hunting for him, hunting for
him!

His foot jammed the accelerator down to the floorboards; the car bucked and promptly stalled. He started it again and strove to keep himself calm. With no spare tire and a bumpy road he could not afford the risk of too much speed. He held himself down to a crawling thirty-five miles an hour, tried to estimate the distance and direction of the water, and prayed.

The main highway jumped at him in the dust and he was almost run down by a big car roaring past to the north. A second followed it, then a vegetable truck, then the tractor unit of a semi-trailer freighter.

It was all he needed to know. He turned north.

He passed the vegetable truck and a jalopy-load of Okiestyle workers, a family. They shouted at him, but he kept going. Several cars more powerful than his passed him and he passed in turn several of the heaps used by the itinerant farm workers. After that he had the road to himself. Nothing came from the north.

The trainlike rumble behind him increased.

He peered into the rear-view mirror but could see nothing through the dusty haze.