Ole Doc Methuselah (24 page)

“Now
where did you think you were going?” he demanded. “Here. Listen to this.” And
he turned on a big radio beside Giotini's bed, flipping the cog switches for
stations. But there was only one on, which was just then announcing.
“Sometimes,” said Ole Doc, “I almost think Hippocrates was right!”

Then
he went back to the case and tried to pick up the threads of his computations.
Suddenly he had it. It all came back and lay there in a scrawl looking at him.

It
was the basic formula of cellular memory transmission in the neurosonic range,
derived from the highest harmonic of nerve cell frequency and computable in
this form to calculate the bracket of particular memory types as transmitted
from sonic reception to audiosonic recording cells. It was the retention
frequency of audio memory.

As
the nerve cell does not live long and as it is very liable to putrefaction, Ole
Doc considered himself fortunate to find as much of Giotini's brain intact as
he had.

He
began to work with a disk recorder and mike, setting up a tangle of wires which
would have done credit to a ham operator, back on Earth. The thunder was
beginning at the front door again.

Vaguely
through his preoccupation filtered the radio behind him.
“. . . the complete depopulation of this planet is a certainty. No slightest
signal has come from there since ten this morning at which time the recording
you have just heard was taken. There is no government bulletin on this. Dr.
Glendenning of the generalissimo's staff states that the disease is so virulent
that it is probably capable of a clean sweep of the Planet Hass. Gasperand then
remains the only populated planet in this system and a rapid survey this
morning showed that the continent of Vargo and our present location alone
contain any surviving beings. It is momentarily expected—”

Ole
Doc looked back to his work and worked even harder. The efforts at the door
grew louder and more violent.

At
long last, Ole Doc made a playback, nodded and beckoned to the girl. Patricia
came with great reluctance.

“You
should be interested in this,” said Ole Doc. “It remarks an advance of
science. I have taken Giotini's brain, preserved it and have taken from it its
various memories in the audio range. Now if you will listen—”

She
listened for about three seconds, her eyes saucer big with horror, and then she
screamed loud enough to drown radio and battering and gunfire.

Ole
Doc went to the door. “Hello out there!”

The
thundering stopped.

“Hello
out there,” said Ole Doc. “It is necessary that I speak with Lebel. You're not
going to get in here and if you keep at this too long, my relief ship will come
down on you with enough guns to blow the whole planet out of orbit. Let me
speak to Lebel!”

There
was a very long pause and then Lebel was heard on the other side of the door.
“Well? Are you going to come out and give yourself up?”

“No,”
said Ole Doc, “but I have built a set to communicate with my base. Unless you
parley you will be a hunted man through all the stars. I have something of
considerable interest to you.”

“I
doubt it,” said Lebel.

“Come
here,” said Ole Doc to the girl. “Tell him what you have seen and heard.”

“It's
horrible!” she said. “I won't!”

“Oh
yes you will!” said Ole Doc. “Tell him.”

“He
cut out Giotini's brain!” she cried. “He put it in a machine and he made it
talk and he's got records in here of him talking! It's horrible!”

Her
weeping was the only sound for several long moments. Then Lebel, with a
strangely constricted throat, said, “You . . . you made a dead man talk?”

“Stay
right there,” said Ole Doc, “and you'll hear about it.” He brought up his
recorder and promptly turned it on full blast.

“My
spies tell me I have not long to live because Lebel has plans against me. I
should never have trusted him. They say he is going to cause the death of
everyone in this entire system. I have watched him lately. It seems certain to
me that assassination is near. I am going to take what precautions I can but he
is a devil. I should never have hired him. He is plotting to overthrow
everything I have done—”

“Want
to hear more?” said Ole Doc.

It
was very silent on the other side of the door. The bar hinges were very well
oiled. The record kept on going and suddenly Ole Doc jerked the panel in and as
quickly shut it again. The bars clanged in place.

Lebel
sprawled ignominiously on the floor and Ole Doc's heel was unkind in the side
of his neck. He was a big man but a stamp like that knocks the largest flat
and, sometimes, kills them quite dead.

Ole
Doc leaned over and knocked Lebel out with his gun butt before that unworthy
could stir.

When
Lebel tried to sit up he was so swathed with satin strips for binding that he
could not stir. He was also choking on a gag. He felt uncomfortable.

“Now,”
said Ole Doc with a gruesome grin, “let's get down to cases. There is only one
thing which could cause death in the fashion I have seen today and that is by
extreme
fear.
Do you follow me?”

Lebel
glugged and struggled. Ole Doc thoughtfully fingered the edge of a scalpel and
cut off a neat lock of Lebel's mustache.

“You
are either flying over the planets or ground patrolling with some instrument to
cause that fear,” said Ole Doc. “And that instrument is obvious to me. Why is
it? Because the helmet you insisted I use had sound filters in it alive only in
the upper range. Therefore it is a sonic weapon. It killed only a limited
number of the people it was directed at, therefore it cannot be a common
supersonic weapon. That makes it
subsonic,
something new and impossible
to trace as such.

“I
don't have to examine your broadcaster to know that it must be a
ten-to-thirteen-cycle
note, below the
range of human hearing. Sensing something which they could not locate or
define, people were terrified by it, for nothing frightens like the unknown. It
probably has a strength of about a hundred and fifty decibels; stronger would
literally tear their eardrums and brains loose.

“It
was on when I found that girl because enough of it got through to your guards
and yourself to make you extremely nervous, even if you did know what it was,
and you fell back to your basic fear of being assassinated. So you gave your
weapon away.

“Glandular
disruption in your targets often caused heart failure, adrenal poisoning and
other fatal reactions all very solidly from fear, and there is no inquest when
people are merely scared to death. The larger percentage of the populace is
deserting or has deserted this system by means of passenger ships. You have
probably helped finance that exodus as a public benefactor while your staff
doctors ran about yelling news of a ‘disease.”'

Lebel
glugged and struggled, angry.

“Now
as to why,” said Ole Doc, slowly passing the scalpel a reluctant inch away
from Lebel's jugular vein, “that is very, very simple. You want to knock off
every living person or drive him away from the planets of this system. That
will leave you and your guards alone in possession. You heard that the UMS was
deeded all the revenue of
Fomalhaut
.
You discovered that
after
you had murdered Giotini. Any government you
could fight. You were afraid to fight us in any but the strictly legal field.

“You
depended upon the law of salvage which says that ‘any planet deserted by her
populace shall become an object of salvage to whomever shall take possession.'
You thought you would have us there. You would own a rich planetary system by
your own galactic title, breaking Giotini's deeds of ownership and therefore
his will.

“You
got suspicious of me when you saw the law books in my kit. You were frightened
by your own weapon which was even then turned on somewhere in the vicinity and
you acted irrationally, scared by self-induced fear. Then you
reached
the palace and got calm and
started to play the game out once more. But advisers got the better of you,
probably because they were newly in from areas where your fine terror weapon
was working, and you became unbalanced enough to actually tackle a Soldier of
Light.

“A
long time ago a fellow you wouldn't know, named Shakespeare, talked about an
engineer being
hoist by
his own petard
. You have somebody on your staff who has done that,
to himself and to you. I heard mention of a ‘Dr.' Glendenning who is in your
pay. He is probably no doctor but a renegade sound engineer. But let that pass.
When I take off this gag you are going to sing out to cease all activity and
begin instant rescue of anyone left alive anywhere in this system.
Understand?”

Lebel
mocked him with his eyes. Ole Doc shrugged and went for a hypo needle, dipped
it in a bottle and came back.

Holding
up the dripping point, very shiny and sharp, Ole Doc said, “This contains
poison. It is a fine poison in that it deprives a man of his reason gradually.
There is no known antidote, save one I carry.”

He
jabbed the needle through Lebel's pants and drove the fiery liquid home. Lebel
leaped and nearly broke the point off.

Ole
Doc stood back with satisfaction. He went and filled the needle with another fluid.
“This is the antidote. If not administered in ten minutes, you will be beyond
all recovery.”

With
this cheerful news, Ole Doc went over to the window, humming a grim tune, and
stood there looking out a slit, needle upright and dripping.

Heels
banging the floor brought him back. “Why,” he said, “only one minute has gone
by! Are you sure you want to give the order?”

Agony
was registered on Lebel's face. Ole Doc removed the gag.

“Guard!”
howled Lebel. “This madman will kill me! Recall all planes. Cease operations!
Stop the agents! Rescue whoever you can! Quick, quick!”

There
was an instant's hesitation outside the door but Lebel drove them to it again
with renewed orders. “He knows all about it. The patrols from Hub City will come! Obey me!”

Bootbeats
went away from there then and Ole Doc could relax. He could hear shouts outside
the palace and turmoil within. They were carrying out orders but they were also
running for their lives. They had played for their shares in a great empire and
they had failed.

Ole
Doc unloosed Lebel's bonds while the generalissimo regarded him incredulously.

“Go
ahead,” said Ole Doc, “get up. I am not sure what is going to happen to you
finally, not sure at all. But right now I am going to pay back something of
what the people in these worlds have suffered. You're a fine, big fighter. You
weren't shot with anything more serious than yellow fever vaccine, the
burningest shot I know. Now put up your fists!”

There
was a renewed turmoil outside the palace gates. It was occasioned by a big
golden ship, clearly marked with the ray rods of pharmacy, setting itself down
with a smoking
wham
directly in the street. The vessel was charred here
and there but serviceable still, and about the maddest gypsummetabolism slave
in several galaxies pressed the grips on the main battery.

The
palace gates caved in, the metal curling like matches turned to charcoal. The
palace doors sizzled down into piles of slag and puddles of brass. A luckless
company of guardsmen trying to get away from there rounded the turret
at the courtyard's end, got scorched by the flames and heat and made it away
with the diverted guns taking their heels off as they ran.

Then
Hippocrates, girded around like a pirate and bristling with rage, stepped down
from the air lock and marched across the yard, walking tough enough to crack
paving blocks. He jumped the glowing pools and stalked with horrible appetite
into the palace proper.

A
guard, running away with a handful of jewelry without knowing of any place to
run, was suddenly hauled up by his belts, suspended two feet off the floor and
banged into a pillar. The jewelry fell in a bright shower and rolled away.
Hippocrates banged him again.

“Where
is my master?” roared Hippocrates.

The
guard didn't answer fast enough, probably because he did not understand in the
least what master was meant, and was promptly banged so hard that he went into
some other realm, there to serve other men, no doubt. Hippocrates dropped him.
He grabbed at a second and missed.

Then
an ominous sound came to him, the thud of bodies in combat and the breaking of
furniture, and he plowed his way through a milling throng like a hot knife into
butter and found himself outside the Giotini suite.

The
door was barred. This was no problem. He blazed away at it at a range no human
could have stood and had himself a hole in it
in a trice
. He fished one hand
through, found a bar and slammed the panels back.