“Mr. Secretary,” he said, when he had obtained his connection on a direct line to Washington, “I have to report an emergency situation in New York. There are half a million people in the subways. They are all of them singing some kind of tommy-rot. And most of them believe that the city has been invaded by men from Mars. The defence workers, special and regular police, and every man I have available, are trying to keep them underground. But I don’t know how much longer we can restrain them.”
There was a short silence on the line and General Snippett was conscious that he had reached a crisis in his career. If he could not convince the Secretary that this nonsense was not of his own doing, he could look forward to spending the remainder of his life in enforced idleness, living on a pension inadequate to his standards of living. The Secretary’s first question was not reassuring.
“Did you say men from Mars?” he asked, crisply.
“Yes, sir,” replied the General. Again there was a short silence.
“How did this nonsense get started?”
“I’ve traced it to a phone call to our own Special Reports’ section. A Civil Defence squad leader, by the name of Mulligan, turned in a report that a group of men from Mars had landed in a flying saucer as part of an invasion force. They threw some kind of a dart at him and his squad. They were dressed in metal coverings.”
“Was he drunk?” the Secretary asked.
“That was our belief. He was told to remain where he was while a patrol went out to bring him in. But when the patrol arrived, he had--ahem--disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes. There was no trace of him.”
“No trace at all?”
“None.”
“What about his men?” “They had disappeared also.”
“No trace?”
“No trace.” Another silence.
“Tell me, General,” the Secretary asked, dryly, “as an Army man, do you place any credence in the Navy report that alcohol is an antidote for atomic radiation?”
“None whatever,” replied the General, fervently.
“I am relieved to hear that. Now, have you seen any of these men from Mars yourself?”
“No.”
“Flying saucers, or anything like that?”
“No.”
“Well, will you kindly go out and make a personal inspection of the city from the Battery to the Bronx, and return and report to me. In the meantime, do whatever is possible to stop this tomfoolery in the subways. This sort of nonsense can ruin an exercise designed to protect the largest city of our nation--a city, I need hardly stress, that has been entrusted to your care. You might ponder, while on your tour, over the fact that no reports have been received from Boston of men from Mars or flying saucers. I hardly think that invaders from another world would be so well informed of local temperament and excitability in the United States, as to select New York over Boston as a place to start operations. Report to me in an hour.”
There was the firm, cold click of a receiver being placed on its hook and General Snippett contemplated the telephone in his hand for a stunned and wrathful moment.
“Tasker!” he roared to his aide. “Get my car!”
Dr. Kokintz, secluded in his sound-proof laboratory on the second floor of the administration building of Columbia University, had not been paying much attention to the air raid preparations. He was a bachelor and this gave him all the freedom of place and time he felt his work required. He had contrived living quarters of a kind for himself in the laboratory, and convinced his landlady that when he did not return home for a day or two--he roomed in an ample boarding house of the McKinley era in Brooklyn--it was not because he was drunk, nor had he been knocked down by a car, nor had he been out with a girlfriend. He had either fallen asleep in a movie, gone to Washington, or was busy working.
Mrs. Reiner, his landlady, a woman of motherly proportions and temperament, never quite believed this. But she did not question him about his habits, though his occasional overnight absences disturbed her greatly. It was not right for bachelors to remain out overnight, to her way of thinking. It was ridiculous when they did so, that they should expect anyone to believe that they were working. And it was even more ridiculous to say that they were working in Columbia University. The only people who worked in Columbia University at night time, to her knowledge, were janitors, and Dr. Kokintz was not a janitor. There was, Mrs. Reiner knew, something peculiar about Dr. Kokintz, but he paid his rent regularly, and liked his birds. And Mrs. Reiner liked birds, too, and undertook to feed the doctor’s for him when he was away. He, in return, gave her his private telephone number in the university, so she could call him up if he were away for any great length of time, but he asked her not to call him at night. Thus it was that Mrs. Reiner, of Acacia Street, Brooklyn, and the President of the United States were the only two people in all America who could call Dr. Kokintz on his private line in his secret nuclear physics laboratory. All others had to make their calls through the university switchboard.
It was not disinterest in the air-raid preparations that caused Dr. Kokintz’s indifference to them. Rather, it was precisely because of the preparations that he had been so preoccupied. For Dr. Kokintz was busy perfecting the quadium bomb, whose imminence as a practical weapon had inspired the great practice alert.
Senator Griffin had stated, it is true, in a vain attempt to reassure the public, that the United States already possessed the Q-bomb. That was not an incorrect statement. The bomb he referred to, however, was an extremely clumsy contrivance which Dr. Kokintz, had put together at the behest of the President and the Secretary of Defence and which he had dismantled immediately, because he wasn’t satisfied with it.
What he wanted to get was a small bomb, a neat package of a bomb, which could be carried by any kind of aircraft anywhere. What he had put together for the President was something as big and as clumsy as a packing case. His professional training, calling for the most scrupulous tidiness and nicety, was offended by it, and demanded something immeasurably neater. The work was intensely interesting to him as a perfectionist. The ultimate result of the work--the widespread devastation which it could cause, the frightful carbon fourteen which it might release, to roll like the very breath of death over vast areas, sterilizing the air and ground--horrified him as a human being. But the perfectionist in him had received more training than the human being, and so he had continued with the task.
He had finished now. On the work bench before him was a small, grey, lead container, the size and shape of a shoe-box. This was the world’s only quadium bomb. It looked quite harmless, but the charge was so delicately triggered--he had used as a spring part of a hair-pin obtained from Mrs. Reiner, his landlady--that a heavy knock or jar would be sufficient to explode it. Dr. Kokintz had not yet devised the safety devices which would prevent the accidental setting-off of his Q-bomb. That was a comparatively simple matter which he could attend to in a little while. The bomb came first and the bomb was finished.
“Dickey,” he said to the canary in a nearby cage, his sole companion in the laboratory, “let us both be very careful indeed. It is time for us to eat, and I will let you out for a while to fly around. But promise me that you won’t knock that box on the floor because if you do, it will vaporize you and everybody in New York City. Myself included.”
The canary chirruped a bright peal of melody.
“I know you are too small to knock the box down,” Dr. Kokintz continued. “It is just that I am nervous. I really ought to take it apart, but I am tired and my hands are trembling. So we will leave it until we have eaten something and then we will take it apart and then go home to sleep.”
He reached into his pocket for his sandwich, found first his pipe and his tobacco, as he almost always did, put them absent-mindedly on the bench and searched some more. He found a wax-paper package which he pulled out and opened dubiously, discovering two pieces of brown bread in which lay two slices of liver sausage. He peered at them through his thick glasses. They looked as though they had once had life, but had died between the slices of bread. In the other pocket was another package, but the sandwich it contained was even more suspicious in appearance.
“Dickey,” the scientist said, “I have had these sandwiches two days, perhaps three, and I don’t think we should eat them. I’ll call the girl on the switchboard and see whether she will send out for some for me.” He picked up the telephone and dialled “O,” which would give him the university switchboard. But after two or three minutes there was no reply.
“Strange,” he said, looking at his watch, “it is only 10.30. Surely she cannot have gone to lunch yet.” He dialled once again, this time waiting longer, and eventually a voice answered. It surprised him that it was a man’s voice, for he could never recall the switchboard being run by a man.
“What is it?” the voice said, in such a way as to convey that whatever it was, it was certainly not worth interrupting the speaker for.
“It is Dr. Kokintz,” the physicist said, “I wanted to get the girl to see whether she could get me a sandwich.”
“Dr. Kokintz?” said the voice, immediately solicitous. “This is the building warden. Where are you?”
“In my laboratory. Who did you say you were?”
“The air-raid warden for the building. There’s an air-raid alert on, you know.”
“An air-raid alert? Are we at war so soon? Nobody said anything to me about it. I think I ought to have been told.”
The voice laughed reassuringly. “No. There’s no war, Doctor. That’s just a lot of talk. We wardens know there’s no war. But this is a real big warning. You can’t leave the building. As a matter of fact, you’d better stay where you are until someone comes up to take you down to the shelter.”
“But I can’t go down to the shelter. I’ve got something here that I dare not leave. It is imperative that I do not leave it.”
“Oh . . . it’s not your canary, is it? I think we can take care of that.”
“No, it’s not my canary. It’s something much different. I can’t leave it and I’m hungry. Can’t someone get me a sandwich?”
The air-raid warden thought hard for a minute. Then he recalled that emergency canteen workers would be around soon with food for those caught by the air-raid sirens without any.
“Just stay where you are a minute, will you, Doc?” he said. “There’ll be someone up with food in a minute or two. But promise me you won’t leave.”
“I promise the whole of New York City that I will not leave,” the doctor replied, gravely.
The warden laughed, hung up, and went to see if there was any sign of the canteen workers coming.
In the meantime Tully and his men, marching fast, reached the university to find it as devoid of life, as menacingly silent, as dead as all the other buildings which they had passed in the tomb-like city. Tully was becoming increasingly anxious and tense. With each minute that went by, he was sure his prospects of seizing the one prize which would bring the United States to its knees, were dimming. It was for him, and the expeditionary force of Grand Fenwick, a race against time. If they could capture this Dr. Kokintz, and his bomb, before the city was attacked, and get him back on board the brig, and set sail, victory would be theirs. But if the city were atom-bombed first, then he and all his men would certainly be killed and the whole venture would come to nothing.
Oddly, he was not particularly afraid of dying. It was the thought of failing Gloriana, his Duchess, that disturbed him. He tried to convince himself that this was a matter of patriotism, that it was love of his country that made him so anxious and so determined to win a resounding victory. But he had to admit secretly that it was more than that. It was Gloriana with the golden hair, the soft persuasive voice, the smile that was as gentle and as personal as a blessing. For the men the war was perhaps one of patriotism. But for himself, though it had started that way, it was rapidly becoming a matter of knight errantry.
The party skirted the university buildings to find all the doors securely bolted, all windows and gates shut, and no means of entry, short of force, available. Tully decided to break in at the main entrance of the administration block.
“Will,” he said to his lieutenant, “cut down that tree, make a battering ram of it, and force the main door.”
Cutting down the tree, a small linden growing out of the sidewalk, was no easy matter. In common with all New York trees, it had to be protected from the people for whose pleasure it had been planted. So there was a stout iron fencing around it, which needed to be battered apart with maces. The noise of the heavy clubs, ringing on the iron, echoed strangely through the quiet streets, disturbing the pigeons which went fluttering away. But the blows served to steady the nerves of the men, for the quiet had affected them all, with the exception of Will, who still secretly believed that the city had been evacuated at the news of the outbreak of war with Grand Fenwick.
Once the fencing had been beaten down, it was a simple task to fell the tree, strip it of its branches, and turn it into a pole suitable for use as a battering ram. Will, who was particularly skilful at this kind of work, reinforced the head of the ram by wrapping a coat of mail around it, securing this in place with leather straps.
“A breach for Grand Fenwick,” he roared. “Remember our Pinot.”
The ram was seized by eight of the bowmen who raced up a flight of shallow stone steps with it, to hurl it crashing against the door. A boom like the beating of an enormous drum resulted. The door shook and seemed to cough, as it were, from the blow which it had received in its stomach. But it held firm.
“Again,” cried Will. “Twice more and we are in.”
As it was, it took but once more. The university door, strong enough to withstand the high spirits of twentieth-century students, was yet not able to hold fast against the breaching tactics of fourteenth-century warriors. It seemed to shrug its hinges in helpless acquiescence and then flung open, the men of Fenwick stumbling inside with their ram. They found themselves in a large hall, again quite empty, quite silent, and quite devoid of a trace of the foe.