The Gods Hate Kansas Page 8

  He put the truck into gear and rolled onto the highway, turning away from Bomer, heading west toward Denver.

  CHAPTER 10

  Battle Is Joined

  It was four o’clock in the morning, a day later, when he swung the truck into the driveway of a pleasant home on a tree-lined Denver street. His throat tightened as he remembered how often he had been a guest in this house, enjoying the warm hospitality, the all-night talks with Allen Farge when their kindred imaginations roamed to the farthest reaches of the universe.

  He looked at Lee, huddled silently in the corner of the seat. “I’m leaving you for a few minutes. You’re plotting ways to defeat and destroy me, of course, and you may succeed because you seem to possess the devil’s own science. But here’s something to bear in mind. You can’t control me as you do these others. You tried that night through Mullane and the Solles, and you’ve undoubtedly tried since when I was inside the camp and menacing your whole scheme. Furthermore, I think I know why you can’t and if my guess is right, that’s a weakness I can use to defeat you.”

  The fleeting blaze of fury in Lee’s eyes told him that his shot had struck home. She glared at him in silent hatred. He put the ignition key in his pocket and opened the cab door.

  “You know I’m a deadly menace to you, but you can’t read my mind to discover what I’m up to. Your only hope of smashing me is to control someone close to me. No one will ever be closer than Lee Mason. If you ever get the idea of destroying her and taking over someone else, you’d better think twice. Alive, she is your only hope of keeping watch on me and stopping me.”

  Walking toward the house, he found himself trembling and perspiring from the strain. He thought he had planted a safeguard against any harm to Lee, but he could never really be sure.

  Listening to the endless melody of the door chimes, Temple began to feel a sick fear that Farge might have gone away on a summer vacation. Then suddenly an ornamental lantern over his head flashed on. The square-jawed, homely face of Allen Farge peered sleepily out through the door pane. Then the sleepy look whipped away and the door was jerked open.

  “Holy boiled owls in a bread basket! Curt, you rumpled Romeo, get the blazes in here. What are you doing out in this neck of the woods besides gladdening my heart?” He squinted and made a face. “Eegads! You look like a bad accident on its way to happen. Boy, you need a good stiff drink.”

  Temple grinned in weary relief. “You, my good man, are so right. And fix yourself one just as stiff. You’re going to need it when you hear my story.”

  Farge grabbed his arm. “Straight ahead to the kitchen. If you say the word, I’ll mix up a washtub full.”

  They compromised on tall glasses, bickering amiably over measurements and mixers. But when they had seated themselves at the kitchen table, the light laughter went out of Farge’s face.

  “All right, Curt,” he said quietly. “Down a couple of good slugs and get on with it. You’re not here on any jolly social visit. That look in the back of your eyes would scare a witch off her broomstick. Let’s have it.”

  Temple told him everything from the mystery of the stony meteorites bombarding Kansas to the harrowing flight from the camp. At mention of the Crimson Plague, Farge’s lips tightened.

  “I’ve seen victims of the Plague and I don’t want to see any more. Do you really think those things are behind it?”

  Temple nodded. “I’m almost sure of it, Al. And I’m just as sure that the reason bacteriologists can’t find Plague germs is because there aren’t any germs. Maybe the cause is a filterable virus too small for even the electron microscope to pick up. Or it may be caused by something completely foreign to any knowledge we possess. But I just can’t swallow their offer to transport Plague victims to the moon as altogether an altruistic gift to humanity. I haven’t seen a speck of evidence that they give one damn about humanity. I don’t know what the purpose of their fantastic setup is, but I’m betting it’s just plain evil.”

  “You,” Farge said, “have the kind of nasty, suspicious mind I admire. I’m crazy enough to keep listening as long as you go on making two and two add up to four.” Temple described the effect of the blue beam and passed over one of the projectors for his friend to examine. Farge’s eyes gleamed with interest. “Count me in on whatever you decide to do, Curt. All I ask is a chance to take this gadget apart and try to find out what makes it tick.”

  Temple nodded. “It’s a promise. Is your school out for the summer, Al? I’ve lost track of time these past weeks.”

  “It closed last week, my family’s on a long trip, and twenty miles up in the mountains I’ve got one of the neatest little private laboratories you ever laid eyes on. I built it for a spot to hide out in and fool around with off-beat experiments. It’s at your disposal, along with any help I can give. But what’s on your mind, Curt? What line of attack can you possibly launch against an unseeable, untouchable menace such as you describe?”

  “There’s only one I can think of. Somehow I’ve got to duplicate that detector I saw in Lansdon’s lab, the one that made the entity visible to my eyes. We’ve got to be able to see them before we can fight them, Al. Until we can make those things visible at will, we can’t analyze their nature or perfect any sure weapon. That’s item one on the agenda.”

  Farge whistled. “As a warm-up for that little odd job, we might practice catching sunbeams in a butterfly net.”

  Temple grinned tiredly. “I’ve got a few notions shaping up on what that thing was and how to build one like it. But it’s too complex to go into right now. I’m too pooped to make sense.”

  “You should be, after a siege like that,” Farge said. “But to copy something that by all the laws of physics can’t possibly exist…” He shook his head. “You don’t even have one of those entities, as you call them, for a guinea pig to show you when you hit the jackpot.”

  “Oh, but I do have,” Temple said quietly, and for the first time he told of the capture of Lee Mason. He finished, “So you can see what kind of Federal charges you’d be laying yourself in for if you throw in with me on this job.”

  Farge leaped to his feet so violently that his chair went crashing over. His eyes were wild. “To hell with that! But do you mean to tell me you’ve left that poor kid tied up out there in the cold all this time? That’s inhuman.”

  “Take it easy, Al. That ‘poor kid’ would happily slit your throat and mine in a moment if she could get loose. That isn’t Lee Mason out there. It’s a hellish, inhuman thing that has usurped her body. God only knows whether or not her real personality still exists. Maybe if the thing in her brain were destroyed, she would die—or worse yet, have no mind of her own left. I’ve tried not to think of those possibilities, because nothing must keep me from finishing what I started, no matter what the cost.”

  Farge gripped his shoulder for a moment in silent sympathy. “We’ll fight it together, Curt. But what’s to prevent our being taken over, just as she was, by those things?”

  “In your case, nothing. That’s why I don’t dare let you get near her, at least until I’ve tried something. They haven’t been able to get into my brain, and during the long drive I think I figured out why. If I’m right, I can give you the same protection I have before we go any further.” He grinned wryly. “Al, does your willingness to help include sacrificing all the family sterling silver, and do you have a crucible or something I can use to melt it down in a hurry?”

  “Yes, to both questions,” Farge said promptly. “Let’s go.” While a mass of sterling tableware and silver dishes melted slowly over a Bunsen burner in the basement, Temple explained his theory. “I’m convinced that it’s the silver plate in the back of my head that keeps them from reaching my brain. I can’t think of any other reason for my apparent immunity.”

  “But why silver?” Farge demanded.

  Temple shrugged tiredly. “Don’t ask me—except that silver is opaque to ultraviolet radiations beyond thirty-three hundred angstrom units, and the thing I saw h
ad a sort of violet color. Maybe it’s a form of congealed radiation in that range. Anyhow, all we can do is give it a try.”

  “But if those things are so smart, why haven’t they figured it out and done something about it in your case, Curt?”

  “I’m sure they know, all right. But during the two days I was a prisoner, they were occupied in getting their rocket into operation. Besides, there’s no surgeon in the group and removing my screen would be a delicate operation at best.”

  “Then why not just knock you off and be done with it?”

  “I don’t want to sound too modest, my boy, but it’s barely possible they think my feeble brain contains some scraps of information that are important to their plans.”

  The sun was above the horizon when Temple led Farge, looking grotesque in a thin skull cap of hammered silver, out to the truck where Lee huddled, wide awake and glaring. For a long moment she and Farge stared at one another with a strange intensity while Temple watched, almost afraid to breathe. At last Lee flung herself back in the seat, panting.

  “It couldn’t get through, Curt,” Farge said quietly. “I think you’ve won this round.”

  They rode up to the mountain laboratory in the truck, with Lee slumped dully between them. It seemed a safer hiding place for the Culwain truck in case an alarm had been spread. Although he desperately needed sleep, the small triumph had filled him with a new energy and determination. If the luminous menaces could be defeated on one front, there was renewed hope of victory in larger battles.

  * * * *

  An hour later, Temple stared with admiration across one of the most complete private labs he had ever seen. It occupied half of a comfortable log lodge nestled among pines on the mountainside at the end of a private lane. Luxurious living quarters included a spare bedroom, but Temple grimly vetoed using it as a prison for Lee.

  “The window’s too convenient, the door too frail, and there isn’t an adequate lock.”

  They settled finally on a stout, windowless storeroom off the laboratory and fitted it up as a comfortable but reasonably escape-proof cell. A bank of steel shelving on one wall bothered Farge. “She could rip those down and make a dangerous club out of one of those metal uprights, Curt.”

  “We’ll risk it,” Temple decided. “I’m gambling that we’ve scared the thing a little by learning a couple of its secrets. I think it will stay quietly, using her to keep an eye on us until it discovers what our danger quotient really is. The thing I’m most of afraid of is having it abandon her now, maybe even destroy her in retaliation, and turn to some new angle of attack we can’t anticipate or guard against. I’ve tried to throw enough scare into it to block such a move, but against the power it seems to have, my efforts seem pitifully puny.”

  He paced the laboratory, driving a clenched fist into his palm. “Damn it, Al, everything we have is guesswork. It scares the pants off me. How do I know I’m right about any of it? I thought I saw a ball of light on a man’s head and out of that I’ve built up a theory that might be completely cockeyed.

  “What are those things and what are their powers? Sometimes they seem superintelligent and at other times they seem to be dreaming. I’ve pieced odds and ends of clues into a crazy picture that might be all wrong. How do we know it isn’t a picture deliberately planted to throw us off the track?”

  “You saw the thing,” Farge pointed out quietly, “and you were on the track with your silver-cap theory.”

  Temple clutched his head and groaned. “Sure. But for all we know, the place is swarming with the things right now, holding a council of war over the best means to smash us. It’s all such blind shots in the dark.”

  “We’ve shot in the dark all our lives, Curt. We were using workable blueprints of atomic structure before anyone had ever seen an atom. We’ve located, weighed, measured and analyzed dark stars we still can’t see. It’s essentially the same sort of job.”

  “Don’t mind me,” Temple grinned wryly. “There’s nothing actually wrong that a little sleep can’t cure.”

  “Before you cork off, I’m puzzled about something. You said there were over a thousand workmen in that camp and suppliers outside who had their minds monkeyed with so they couldn’t spill important beans. Does that mean there are enough of those blasted entity things so everybody had one riding him?”

  Temple spread his hands helplessly. “Could be, though somehow I doubt it. My guess is that they only enter those minds long enough to alter the memory pattern, like changing a printed radio circuit. I think they can either simply erase a portion or plant a prearranged pattern that will keep their dupes doing only what they’ve been ordered to without supervision. It may be a little like planting a post-hypnotic suggestion. The ones they stay with are those like Lee and the team, whose minds and skills they need constantly.”

  Farge was staring out the window over vistas of mountains clothed in pine and aspen. Without turning he said softly, “Curt, do you suppose while those things were inside someone’s skull they could tamper with the autonomous nervous system, like making that person’s blood all rush to his head and face, making him fall into a state of catalepsy or suspended animation that can be mistaken for death?”

  Temple stared at him, his eyes bloodshot, his face haggard and gray with fatigue. He whispered, “The Crimson Plague…”

  CHAPTER 11

  Counterattack

  The new concept of the Plague added barbs to the lash of desperation that drove them. They became more robot than human themselves, with every nerve in their bodies crying: Faster! Faster!

  The mountains blocked television but Farge’s radio kept them informed of events outside. Apparently the entities had met the challenge by redoubling their own hellish activities.

  The Crimson Plague was spreading with increased speed, leaping oceans to ravage Europe, Asia and Africa and strike ships at sea. Australia cowered, waiting for the first blow to come. Major cities were emptying as panic-stricken people fled with no place to go.

  The moon flights bearing Plague victims had become daily affairs and the new enlarged rocket was almost ready for service. The parade of planes carrying victims from all over the Earth to the field beside the camp had grown so heavy that a traffic control system had to be installed and manned around the clock.

  A Bomer woman was committed to a mental hospital for insisting she had seen her husband working at the camp after he had been supposedly shipped to the moon as a Plague corpse. Temple and Farge exchanged wordless looks and stepped up their efforts another impossible notch.

  Temple had drawn a rough sketch of Lansdon’s detector as detailed as he could remember and this was their blueprint for the search.

  “It’s a stereoscope,” he told Farge, “designed to superimpose the image of the invisible object over the visual image in correct physical relationship. One of the two viewing lenses was, as I told you, opaque, the other apparently an ordinary ground glass magnifier. The black lens could have been ground from Wood’s nickel oxide glass. We know that Wood’s glass filters out visible light rays but permits the passage of ultraviolet light. I’d almost bet that’s the answer to the lens assembly, so there’d be no problem there. Our real headache will lie in that film of violet-colored metal where I saw the combined image.”

  Farge nodded and chewed his lip. “Well, films made from the alkali metals will pass short-wave light below the visible spectrum. But you said that particular film had a definite violet shade, which lets out lithium, sodium, potassium and rubidium. They block all visible light and therefore show only dead black. Cesium, the heaviest of that group, allows some of the visible violet to get through so it would have a violet tint. Your suggestion of trying cesium seems logical, but it almost seems too easy, Curt.”

  “It probably is,” Temple admitted, “but it’s at least some kind of starting point to work from. We might as well try all the alkali metals with every known type of fluorescent screen and see how far we get.”

  Farge nodded eagerly. “
Just give me something besides all Xs to put in a formula and I can try working it out mathematically. While we’re waiting for a Wood’s lens and the stock of alkali metal films to come, what do you say we test that thing on Lee’s head for ultraviolet radiations? We can see if it fogs a photographic plate, emits measurable electrons or reacts on a fluorescent pigment by direct bombardment.”

  They plunged into the new tests with boundless enthusiasm. Farge remained optimistic even after repeated failures as one experiment suggested another or opened a whole new path to be explored. In sharp contrast, Temple’s early hopes dwindled rapidly to a dark depression of spirit.

  “It’s Lee,” he explained glumly when Farge questioned him worriedly. “Haven’t you noticed how meek and cooperative she’s gotten since we started these tests? Even when she remembers to fight and snarl at us, it’s plainly just acting. Most of the time she sits there, looking like the cat that ate the canary and trying not to laugh in our fat, foolish faces while we play our silly games with the back of her head.”

  “Come to think of it,” Farge said, startled, “I believe you’re right, Curt. Does that mean…?”

  “It means,” Temple said harshly, “that we’re so far off the right track that we aren’t even worth glaring at any more.”

  Farge pounded a determined fist on the bench. “One of these fine days we’ll change that smile, Curt. You just wait and see.”

  They cut sleep to three hours out of the twenty-four and ate only when weakness reminded them of the need for fuel on the fires of their driving energy. Both looked ten years older.