Sinister Barrier (17 page)

“God!” Straightening, Graham knew that the man at his feet had slipped away for ever. Snatching up the dropped automatic, he dashed into the nearest levitator. Masonry was still tumbling outside, but he didn’t hear it. What awaited him upstairs?

“Take a look upstairs then get out fast!”

The segmentary automatic ready in his grip, his glistening eyes gazing up the shaft, he danced with impatience as his disk soared with what seemed to be excruciating slowness.

A horrible queasiness permeated his stomach when he looked into Leamington’s New York field office. The place was a shambles. He counted them quickly—seven! Three bodies lay near the window, their cold faces indelibly stamped with the mark of diabolical fate. Their guns were in their jacket-holsters, unused. They’d never had a chance!

The other four were scattered haphazardly around. These had drawn their weapons and used them. One of the quartet was Colonel Leamington, his riddled frame retaining dignity even in death.

“The trio by the window were settled by Vitons,” decided Graham, forcing aside his dazed horror, compelling himself as calmly as possible to weigh up the situation. “The rest killed each other.”

Momentarily oblivious of the warning to get out fast, he moved nearer the chief’s desk, studied positions, attitudes. It was not difficult to reconstruct the series of events. Evidently the pair by the door—the last to arrive—had opened up on Leamington and the other, but had not been quick enough. Leamington and his aide had swapped shots simultaneously with the newcomers. The result was a likely one; these modern segmentary missiles were blatantly murderous compared with old-fashioned, one-piece bullets.

All the bodies were those of former intelligence men; that was what had him puzzled. He roved around the room, the gun still in his fist, his brow deeply creased as he tried to find the solution.

“Looks like the luminosities first got those three by the window, leaving Leamington and another unharmed—or, at any rate, alive.” His frown grew more pronounced. “They left two alive. Why in hell should they have done that? Something mighty queer there!” He edged his buttocks onto the desk while he surveyed the bodies. “After that, three more came along, perhaps because Leamington had summoned them. They turned up, and must have realized something was wrong—for right away they started the fireworks. All five got theirs. Four flopped for keeps. The fifth crawled out and got down the stairs.” He hefted the gun, feeling its weight. “But there’s nothing to show
why
the fireworks started!”

Swallowing hard, he collected the plain, iridium-lined rings from the dead men’s fingers, dropped them into his pocket. Regardless of what had occurred, all these men had been fellow operatives, trusted workers in Uncle Sam’s most trusted service.

A bell chimed softly in one corner. Crossing to the telenews receiver, he flipped it open, saw the
Times
screen-exhibited first edition. He scanned it carefully.

Asian pressure increasing in the mid-West, yelled the
Times.
Workers’ demonstration demands that atom-bomb stocks be released forthwith. European situation extremely serious. Thirty enemy stratplanes brought down in southern Kansas during war’s biggest stratosphere dogfight. Four-thousand mile lucky-shot blasts Asian dump, devastating one hundred square miles. Bacteriological warfare shortly, says Cornock. Congress outlaws Viton-worshipping cult.

The page crawled off the screen, was followed by local news. Understanding lightened his face as he read. People were running amok! All over New York, in most of the Occidental world’s great cities, people were being kidnaped, spirited into the skies, then returned to earth—and were being returned in mental condition much different from their former state.

Supersurgery in the clouds! The grip tightened upon his gun as the terrible significance burst through the haze created by the slaughter in the office. This was the masterstroke! Ultimate victory was to be made infinitely more certain, and—in the interim—still more emotional honey was to be produced with the aid of helpless recruits conscripted from the very ranks of the anti-Viton armies!

What was it that poor devil downstairs had said? “Town’s… full of nuts!” That was it! The three by the window had died resisting, or had been killed as unsuitable for supersurgical purposes. Leamington and the other had been snatched, operated upon, and returned. They had returned as mental slaves of their ghastly opponents. The office had become a trap cunningly designed to get the intelligence operatives—the heart of the resistance—singly, in pairs or in groups.

But the last three, arriving together, somehow had realized their peril. With that unflinching devotion to duty typical of their kind they had blasted Leamington and his companion. Sentiment had no place in fast play of this ugly description. Unhesitatingly, the three had wiped out their own chief, blowing him into swift and bloody death because quick-wittedly they knew that he was no longer their chief, he was a mind-warped instrument of the foe.

The field office had been a trap
—possibly was still a trap!
The thought stabbed through Graham’s brain, made him jump toward the window. Staring out, he noted that random clouds had drifted away leaving a clear, blue sky in which the morning sun shone brightly.

There might be a hundred, a thousand luminosities swaying around in that azure bowl, some actually drifting nearer, some guarding the trap and now about to swoop. Even Bjornsen’s wonderful formula couldn’t enable one to pick out glowing ultra-blue from a background of glowing normal-blue. The basic and the hyper shared the same sheen under the early sun, making both confusing.

The knowledge that his anxious stare was accompanied by equally anxious thoughts, and that his broadcast psycho-vibrations might entice adjacent trappers, made him race for the door without further ado. Best to get clear while yet there was time! He hit the levitators, went down with a rush.

Two men were lounging just inside the front door. He spotted them through the transparent tube of his shaft even as his disk made a rubbery bounce and settled at street level.

Without leaving the shaft, he reasoned quickly, “If those guys were normal they’d show some curiosity about those two bodies lying within their sight. They aren’t interested, and therefore aren’t normal. They are dupes!”

Before his disk quite had ceased its cushioning motion he dropped it farther, his long, athletic form sinking from sight of the waiting pair. They stiffened in surprise, ran toward the shaft. Both had guns.

Five levels below the street, he stopped, was out of the perpendicular tube and across the basement ere hidden compressors ceased their sighing. Ducking beneath the main stairway, he heard feet stamping at the top. Hefting his automatic, he fled through a series of empty corridors, gained an exit at the building’s farther end. Coming out through a steel trapdoor, he sniffed fresh air appreciatively. It was a welcome change from that underground odor of fungus and rats. Wearers of the ring were familiar with six such exits, all unknown to and unsuspected by the general public.

The desk sergeant at the precinct station shoved the phone across the polished mahogany, amputated half a wiener, spoke around it. “That’s nothing, feller! Police Commissioner Lewthwaite got his around six o’clock. His own bodyguard done it.” Another bite. “What’s it coming to when big guys get bumped by their bodyguards?”

“Yes, what?” agreed Graham. He rattled the phone angrily. “Looks like they’ve wrecked the city phone system as well.”

“All through the night,” mumbled the sergeant, forcing the words through his gag. He gulped, popped his eyes, yo-yoed his Adam’s apple. “Dozens of them, hundreds! We’ve bopped them, beat them, shot their pants off and burned them down—and still they come! Some of the nuts were our own boys, still in uniform.” His other hand came up, showing a huge police positive. “When Heggarty reports in, I’ll be ready for him—in case he ain’t Heggarty! You can’t ever tell who’s next until he starts something!”

“You can’t trust your own mother.” Suddenly getting his connection, Graham shouted, “Hi, Hetty!” He grinned sourly as he heard the answering, “Hi!” then snapped, “I want Mr. Sangster, pronto!”

A deep rich voice took over. Graham drew a long breath, recounted his experience of half an hour before, pouring out a rapid flow of words as he described the scene in the intelligence department’s office.

“I can’t get Washington,” he concluded. “They say all the lines are down and the beams out of action. For the time being, I’m reporting to you. There’s no one else within reach to whom I can report.”

“This is terrible news, Graham,” came Sangster’s grave tones. “From where are you speaking?”

“How the heck do I know?”

“Surely you know where you are at the present moment?” Sangster’s voice went two tones higher in surprise.

“Maybe. But you don’t—and won’t!”

“Meaning that you refuse to tell me? You suspect
me?
You think I may be yet another of the mentally mutilated?” He was silent a while. His listener tried to discern his expression in the phone’s tiny television screen, but the thing was out of order, displaying only occasional glimpses between vague whorls of light and shadow. “I suppose I cannot blame you for that,” Sangster went on. “Some of their conscripts act like dumb gangsters, but others display extraordinary cunning.”

“All I’d like you to do—if you can find a way of doing it—is get my reports to Washington,” Graham said. “I’m too much on the hop to seek a way myself. You’ll have to help me there.”

“I’ll try,” Sangster promised. “Anything else?”

“Yes. I’d like to secure the names and addresses of any other Intelligence operatives who may be in or near this city. They won’t all have fallen into that trap. Sometimes some of them don’t report in for weeks. I reckon a few must still be roaming free. Leamington was the only one here who had the information I want, but Washington can supply it.”

“I’ll see what can be done.” Sangster paused, then came through a little louder. “A couple of Leamington’s recent queries were handled by this department.”

“Discover anything?” Graham asked, eagerly.

“A reply from Britain says that McAndrews’ laboratory and notes showed that he’d been conducting an interesting line of research in the variation of particle-velocities under heat treatment. Apparently he was hunting the secret of sub-atomic binding power. He’d had no success up to the time of his disappearance, and the British have given him up for dead.”

“That’s a safe bet!” Graham asserted. “He’s been analysed—and the leftovers have been thrown away. He’s in some celestial ash-can—a dismembered rabbit!”

“My own imagination can draw all the pictures without you filling in the colors,” reproved Sangster. “Leave me alone with my dreams. It’s unnecessary to emphasize their horror.”

“Sorry!”

“We’ve found that no radio amateur eavesdropped on Padilla,” Sangster continued. “Whatever he told Treleaven is fated to remain a mystery. Data on Padilla’s life reveals nothing except that he was a financially successful radio experimenter. He made a big wad out of simplified frequency modulation. He made his own funeral out of something else—but left no record to indicate what it was.”

“I’d given up that lead a couple of days ago.”

“You say that as if you’ve found another and better one.” Sangster’s voice was pregnant with interest. “Have you?”

“I find one almost every morning,” declared Graham, glumly, “and it goes rotten on me by night. As a gallivanting gumshoe, I sure picked myself a heller right at the start!” He pursed his lips and sighed. “What are the governmental experts doing?”

“Nothing, as far as I know. There are two groups assembled in lonely places suggested by Leamington. They’ve discovered that the very loneliness which is their protection is also their handicap. They plan things, design them, make them—then find that there are no adjacent luminosities on which to test them.”

“Gosh, I overlooked that,” Graham admitted.

“It’s not your fault. None of us thought of it.” Sangster was now lugubrious. “If we transfer them to Viton-infested pastures, they’ll get wiped out. It’s an impasse.” He snapped his fingers with impatience.

“Probably you’re right, sir,” said Graham. “I’ll report again directly I’ve turned up something worth reporting.”

“Where are you going now?” The question came sharply.

“I’m deaf in this ear,” Graham told him. “Funny—I don’t seem able to hear you at all.”

“Oh, all right.” Disappointment trickled through the wires. “I guess you know best. Take care of yourself!” A loud click signalled that he had rung off.

“When in doubt,” offered the desk sergeant, darkly, “see who’s making money out of it.”

“Who’s making it now?” Graham asked.

“Morticians.” The sergeant frowned at his listener’s grin. “Well, ain’t they?”

Chapter 12

THE BRONZE PLATE SAID:
Freezer Fabricators of America, Inc.
Graham walked in, spent five minutes sparring a stubborn executive before that worthy agreed to conduct him to the golden name on the old oak door.

That name was Thurlow, and its owner was a living mummy. Thurlow looked as if he’d sweated himself dry in lifelong pursuit of percentages.

“We can’t do it,” complained Thurlow, after Graham had explained the purpose of his visit. His voice rustled like ages-old papyrus. “We couldn’t supply a refrigerator to the Sultan of Zanzibar even if he offered to balance its weight with jewels. Our plant has been engaged wholly on government work since the war began, and we haven’t turned out a solitary freezer.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Graham dismissed the point without argument. “I want one for the university to pick to pieces. Give me a list of your local customers.”

“Nothing doing!” Thurlow’s bony hand massaged his bald, yellow pate. “Things won’t always be like this. Some day, my prince will come. Fine fool I’ll look with my consumer-list circulating among competitors.”

“Are you insinuating—?” began Graham, angrily.

“I’m insinuating nothing.” Thurlow waved him down. “How do I know you are what you represent yourself to be? That trick ring of yours doesn’t mean a goddam thing to me. I can’t read its inscriptions without a microscope. Why don’t the authorities provide you with a microscope?” His cackle was funereal.
“Heh-heh-heh!”