The Onslaught from Rigel
By FLETCHER PRATT
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Wonder Stories
Quarterly Winter 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: A jagged beam of flame, intenser than the hottest furnace
leaped through the air, struck the green globe and reached the earth in
a thousand tiny rivulets of light.]
* * * * *
THE ONSLAUGHT FROM RIGEL
_By the author of "The Reign of the Ray," "The War of the Giants," etc._
[Illustration: FLETCHER PRATT]
Mr. Pratt is well known for his "Reign of the Ray," and "The War of the
Giants" where in both stories he showed his excellent knowledge of
warfare, and what a future war might be like.
In this story he combines that knowledge with a vivid and fertile
scientific imagination to construct an interplanetary story that marks a
new triumph for WONDER STORIES QUARTERLY.
We know that many scientists believe that life may originally have come
to earth in the form of spores, from other solar systems and other
universes. We therefore might really have had our home dim ages ago, on
worlds distantly removed from our earth.
The ability to travel the interstellar spaces, however, might also be
possessed by other creatures--creatures driven by fear, necessity and by
the will to conquer. And if they come, in mighty waves, with scientific
powers far beyond us, to dominate the earth, a terrible time will face
the puny human race.
And in this story they do come, and provoke some of the strangest and
most exciting adventures that have yet been recorded.
* * * * *
THE ONSLAUGHT FROM RIGEL
Murray Lee woke abruptly, with the memory of the sound that had roused
him drumming at the back of his head, though his conscious mind had been
beyond its ambit. His first sensation was an overpowering stiffness in
every muscle--a feeling as though he had been pounded all over, though
his memory supplied no clue to the reason for such a sensation.
Painfully, he turned over in bed and felt the left elbow where the ache
seemed to center. He received the most tremendous shock of his life. The
motion was attended by a creaking clang and the elbow felt exceedingly
like a complex wheel.
He sat up to make sure he was awake, tossing the offending arm free of
the covers. The motion produced another clang and the arm revealed
itself to his astonished gaze as a system of metal bands, bound at the
elbow by the mechanism he had felt before, and crowned, where the
fingers should be, by steely talons terminating in rubber-like
finger-tips. Yet there seemed to be no lack of feeling in the member.
For a few seconds he stared, open-mouthed, then lifted the other arm. It
was the right-hand counterpart of the device he had been gazing at. He
essayed to move one, then the other--the shining fingers obeyed his
thought as though they were flesh and blood.
A sense of expectant fear gripped him as he lifted one of the hands to
unbutton his pajamas. He was not deceived in the half-formed
expectation; where the ribs clothed in a respectable amount of muscle
should have been, a row of glistening metal plates appeared. Thoughts of
body-snatching and bizarre surgery flitted through his mind to be
instantly dismissed. Dreaming? Drunk? A dreadful idea that he might be
insane struck him and he leaped from the bed to confront a mirror. His
feet struck the floor with a portentous bang and each step produced a
squeak and clank--and he faced the mirror, the familiar mirror before
which he had shaved for years. With utter stupefaction he saw an iron
countenance, above which a stiff brush of wire hair projected
ludicrously.
One does not go mad at such moments. The shock takes time to sink in.
"At all events I may as well get dressed," he remarked to himself
practically. "I don't suppose water will do this hardware any good, so
I'll omit the bath; but if I'm crazy I might as well go out and have a
good time about it."
Dressing was a process prolonged by an examination of himself and the
discovery that he was a most efficient metal machine. He rather admired
the smoothness of the hip joints and the way the sliding parts of his
arms fitted together, and was agreeably surprised to find that in the
metallizing process his toes had become prehensile. Just for the fun of
it, he pulled one shoe on with the opposite foot.
It was not until he was nearly dressed that he realized that the wonted
noise of New York, which reached one as a throaty undertone at the
forty-eighth story of a modern apartment building, was somehow absent.
Surely, at this hour--he glanced at the clock. It had stopped at a
quarter to two. No help there. His watch was inexplicably missing.
Probably Ben had borrowed it.... Ah!
That was the idea. Ben Ruby, with whom he occupied the duplex apartment
in the penthouse of the Arbuckle Building, was a scientist of sorts
(mainly engaged in the analysis of "booze" samples for millionaires
distrustful of their bootleggers, these days)--he would be able to
explain everything.
He stepped across to the door and dropped the brass knocker, a little
timorous at the sound of his own thudding steps. The door was snatched
open with unexpected suddenness by a caricature of Ben in metal--as
complete a machine as himself, but without most of the clothes.
"Come in! Come in!" his friend bellowed in a voice with an oddly
phonographic quality to it. "You look great. Iron Man MacGinnity! What
did you put on clothes for? As useful as pants on a rock-drill. I have
breakfast."
"What is it? Am I crazy, are you, or are we both?"
"Of course not. Greatest thing that ever happened. The big comet. They
said she was radioactive, but most of 'em wouldn't believe it. Now look
what it did." (Murray Lee remembered vaguely some newspaper palaver
about a giant comet that was going to strike the earth--argument and
counter-argument as to whether it would have a serious effect.)
"Everybody's turned to metal; nize machinery, ate oop all de
axle-grease. You need oil. Stick around."
He disappeared into the bowels of the apartment, the sound of his
footsteps ringing enormous in the vast silence. In an instant he was
back with a radio battery in one hand and an oil-can in the other.
"Sorry, no grease on tap," he remarked briskly. "Typewriter oil." He
went to work busily, squirting drops of oil into Lee's new metallic
joints. "Connect this thing up yourself. It fills you with what it
takes." He indicated the battery with an extended toe. "One arm and the
opposite leg. There seems to be a resistance chamber in us somewhere
that collects the juice."
Without in the least understanding what it was all about, Murray Lee
made shift to follow his instruction. It was the most singular meal he
had ever partaken of, but he found it curiously invigorating.
"How about another? No? Have you seen anybody else? It finished most of
them."
"Will you sit down and tell me consecutively what it's all about before
I bash you?" asked Murray, petulantly. "Being turned into a machine is
not the easiest thing in the world on one's temper; it upsets the
disposition."
"Some sort of a special extra radioactive gas storm connected with the
comet, I think, though I can't be sure. It's made machines of all of us,
now and forever more. We'll live on electric current after this and
won't have to bother about little things like doctors if we can find a
good mechanic. But it killed a lot of people. Come along, I'll show
you."
* * * * *
His hand rang on Murray's arm as he grasped it to lead the way. The hall
was portentously dark, and Ben pulled him straight across it to the door
marked "Fire Exit."
"Elevator?" queried Murray.
"No go. No power."
"Oh, Lord, forty-eight stories to walk."
"You'll get used to it." They were clanking to the landing of the floor
below and Ben, without the slightest compunction, pushed boldly into the
door of the apartment there. The lock showed signs of being forced. "Oh,
I broke it in," Ben answered Murray's unspoken query. "Thought I might
be able to help, but it was no use. That fat woman lives here--you know,
the one that used to sniff at us in the elevator when we went on a
bender."
Any qualms Murray felt about looking on the naked face of death were
perfunctorily laid to rest as the scientist led him into the room
occupied by the late lady of the elevator. She lay solidly in her bed
amidst the meretricious gorgeousness she had affected in life, the
weight of her body sagging the bed grotesquely toward its center.
Instead of the clean-running mechanical devices which marked the
appearance of the two friends, she was nothing but lumps and bumps, a
bulging, ugly cast-iron statue, distending the cheap "silk" nightdress.
"See?" said Ben, calmly. "The transmutation wasn't complete. Prob'ly
didn't get it as strong as we did. Look, the window's closed. This will
be a warning to people who are afraid to sleep in a draft. Come along."
Murray lingered. "Isn't there anything ... we can do?" He felt
uncomfortably responsible.
"Not a thing," said Ben, cheerfully. "All she's good for is to stand
in the park and look at. Come along. We've got a lot of stairs to go
down ... we're too noisy; need a good bath in non-rusting oil."
They reached the street level after an æon of stairs, Ben leading the
way to the corner drug store. All about them was a complete silence;
fleecy white clouds sailed across the little ribbon of blue visible at
the top of the canyon of the New York city street.
"Lucky it's a nice day," said Ben, boldly stepping into the drug store,
the door of which stood open. "We'll have to figure out this rainy
weather thing. It's going to present a problem."
Within, the drug store presented the same phenomena of arrested
development as the apartment of the fat lady at the forty-seventh story.
A cast-iron statue of a soda-clerk leaned on the fountain in an attitude
of studied negligence, its lips parted as though addressing some words
to the equally metallic figure of a girl which faced him across the
counter. On her steely features was a film of power, and the caked and
curling remains of her lip stick showed she had been there for some
time.
"By the way," Murray asked, "have you any idea what day it is, and how
long we were--under the influence? It couldn't have happened overnight."
"Why not?" came Ben's voice from the rear of the store. "Say, old dear,
rummage around some of those drawers for rubber gloves, will you? I'd
hate to run into high voltage with this outfit."
"Ah, here they are," came from Ben finally. "Well, let's go."
"What's the next step?" They were outside.
"Rubber shoes, I fancy," said Ben, as his feet skidded on the pavement.
"Let's take a taxi there and go find a shoe store."
Together they managed to slide the cast-iron taxi driver from his seat
(Murray was surprised at how easily he was able to lift a weight he
could not have budged in his flesh and blood days), deposited him on the
curb and climbed in. The key was fortunately in the switch.
As they swung around the corner into Madison Avenue, Lee gave an
exclamation. A scene of ruin and desolation met their eyes. Two or three
street cars had telescoped and an auto or so had piled into the
wreckage. All about were the iron forms of the passengers in these
conveyances, frozen in the various attitudes they had assumed at the
moment of the change, and from one or two of them thin streamers of
metal showed where blood had flowed forth before it had been
irretrievably crystallized to metal.
Murray Lee suddenly realized that an enormous amount of machinery had
gone to smash everywhere when the guiding hands had been removed and the
guiding brains frozen to useless metal. He gave a little shudder.
* * * * *
They swung round before a shoe store with grating brakes. The door was
locked, but Ben, lifting his foot, calmly kicked a hole in the show
window. Murray extended a restraining hand, but his friend shook it off.
"No use asking permission. If the proprietor of this place is still
alive anywhere, it will be easy enough to settle up for the damage; if
he isn't, we have as good a right to it as anybody."
The new toes, which appeared to be longer than those he remembered, made
fitting a difficulty, and Murray split two or three shoes before he got
a pair on.
"What next?" he asked. "I feel like a drink."
"No use," said Ben. "You're on the wagon for good. Alcohol would play
merry hell with your metalwork. The best thing is to find out how many
people we are. For all we know, we're the only ones in the world. This
thing seems to have knocked out everybody along the street level. Let's
try some of the taller apartment buildings and see if we can find more
penthouse dwellers."
"Or maybe the others came to before us and went away," offered Murray.
"True," Ben replied. "Anyhow, look-see." He led the way to the taxi.
"Wait," said Murray. "What's that?"
Above the sound of the starting engine came the echo of heavy footsteps,
muffled by shoes.
"Hey! Coo-ee! This way!" shouted Ben. The footsteps tentatively
approached the corner. Murray ran forward, then stopped in amazement.
The newcomer was a girl--or would have been a girl had she not been all
metal and machinery like themselves. To his eyes, still working on
flesh-and-blood standards, she was anything but good-looking. She was
fully and formally dressed, save that she wore no hat--the high pile of
tangled wire that crowned her head made this obviously impossible.
"Oh, what _has_ happened?" she cried at them. "What can I do? I took a
drink of water and it hurt."
"Everything's all right. Just a little metal transformation," said Ben.
"Stick around, I'll get you some oil. You squeak." He was off down the
street in a clatter, leaving Murray with the newcomer.
"Permit me to introduce myself," he offered. "I am--or was--Murray Lee.
My friend, who has gone to get you some oil, is Benjamin Franklin Ruby.
He thinks the big comet which hit the earth contained radioactive gas
that made us all into metal. Did you live in a penthouse?"
She eyed him darkly. "Somebody told you," she said, "I'm Gloria
Rutherford, and we have the top floor of the Sherry-Netherland, but all
the rest were away when this happened.... Oh, pardon me, it hurts me to
talk."
There came a crash from down the street, indicating that Ben was forcing
another store, and in a minute he was back with a handful of bottles.
With a flourish he offered one to the girl. "Only castor, but it's the
best the market affords," he said. "What we need is a good garage, but
there aren't many around here.... Go ahead, drink her down, it's all
right," he assured the girl, who was contemplating the bottle in her
hand with an expression of distaste.
Following his own recommendation, he tipped up one of the bottles and
drank a deep draught, then calmly proceeded to douse himself from head
to foot with the remainder.
She made a little grimace, then tried it. "Thank you," she said, setting
the bottle down. "I didn't think it was possible anybody could like the
stuff except in a magazine ad. Now tell me, where are all the other
people and what do we do?"
"Do?" queried Ben. "Find 'em. How? Ask Mr. Foster. Anybody else in your
neck of the woods?"
She shook her head. Murray noticed that the joints of her neck rattled.
"Paulson--that's my maid--was the only other person in our apartment,
and she seems to be even more solid-iron in the head than usual--like
this lot." She swung her hand round in an expressive gesture toward the
image of a policeman which was directing two similar images to pause at
the curb.
"How about a bonfire?" suggested Murray. "That's the way the Indians or
South Africans or somebody, attract attention."
"What could we burn?" asked Ben. "... A building, of course. Why not?
Property doesn't mean anything any more with all the property owners
dead."
"I know," said Gloria Rutherford, falling into the spirit of his
suggestion. "The old Metropolitan Opera. That eyesore has worried me for
the last five years."
The suggestion was endorsed with enthusiasm. They climbed into the taxi
and twenty minutes later were hilariously kindling a blaze in the
back-stage section of the old building, running out of it with childish
delight to watch the pillar of smoke grow and spread as the flames
caught the timbers, long dry with age.
Murray sighed as they sat on the curb across the street. "This is the
only time I've ever been as close as I wanted to be to a big fire," he
complained, "and now there isn't even a policeman around for me to make
faces at. But such is life!"
"What if it sets fire to the whole city?" inquired Gloria practically.
Ben shrugged. "What if?" he replied. "Doesn't mean anything. Bet there
aren't more than a couple of dozen people alive. But I don't think it
will. Modern construction in most of these places is too fireproof."
"Look, there's a bird," said Gloria, indicating a solid metal sparrow,
fixed, like the human inhabitants of the city, in his last position in
life at the edge of the curb. "By the way, what do we eat? Do we live on
castor oil all the time?"
CHAPTER II
A Metal Community
The conversation turned into a discussion of the possibilities of their
new form. Whether they would need sleep was a moot point, and they were
discussing the advisability of training mechanics as doctors when the
first footsteps announced themselves.
They belonged to a man whose face, ornamented by a neat Van Dyke in
wire, gave him the appearance of a physician of the more fleshly life,
but who turned out to be a lawyer, named Roberts. He was delighted with
the extraordinary youthfulness and vitality he felt in the new
incarnation. Fully dressed in morning clothes, he bore the information
that he was one of a group of four who had achieved the metal
transformation atop the French building. He promptly plunged into a
discussion of technicalities with Ben that left the other two out of it,
and they moved off to the Seventh Avenue side of the building to see
whether any more people were visible.
"Do you miss the people much?" asked Murray, by way of making
conversation.
"Not a bit," she confessed. "My chief emotion is delight over not having
to go to the de la Poers' tea tomorrow afternoon. Though I suppose we
will miss them as time goes on."
"I don't know about that," Murray replied. "Life was getting pretty
complicated and artificial--at least for me. There were so many things
one had to do before one began living--you know, picking the proper
friends and all that."
The girl nodded understandingly. "I know what you mean. My mother would
throw a fit if she knew I were here talking to you right now. If I met
you at a dance in Westchester it would be perfectly all right for me to
stay out with you half the night and drink gin together, but meeting you
in daylight on the street--oh, boy!"
"Well," Murray sighed, "that tripe is all through with now. What do you
say we get back and see how the rest are getting along?"
They found them still in the midst of their argument.
"--evidently some substance so volatile that the mere contact with
animal tissue causes a reaction that leaves nothing of either the
element or the tissue," Ben was saying. "You note that these metal bands
reproduce the muscles almost perfectly."
"Yes," the lawyer replied, "but they are too flexible to be any metal I
know. I'm willing to grant your wider knowledge of chemistry, but it
doesn't seem reasonable. All I can think of is that some outside agency
has interfered. These joints, for instance--," he touched Ben's elbow,
"--and what about the little rubber pads on your fingers and toes and
the end of your nose?"
There was a universal motion on the part of the others to feel of their
noses. It was as the lawyer had said--they were, like the fingers and
toes, certainly very much like rubber--and movable!
"Don't know," said Ben. "Who did it, though? That's what boggles your
scheme. Everybody's changed to metal and nobody left to make the changes
you mention. However, let's go get the rest of your folks. I wonder if
we ought to have weapons. You two wait here."
He clanked off with the lawyer to the taxi. A moment later, the tooting
of the horn announced their return. The party consisted, beside Roberts
himself, of his daughter, Ola Mae, a girl of sixteen, petulant over the
fact that her high-heeled shoes were already breaking down under her
weight; a Japanese servant named Yoshio; and Mrs. Roberts, one of those
tall and billowy women of the earlier life who, to the irritation of the
men, turned out to be the strongest of any of them. Fat, apparently, had
no metallic equivalent, and her ample proportions now consisted of bands
of metal that made her extraordinarily powerful.
With these additions the little group adjourned to Times Square to watch
the billowing clouds of smoke rising above the ruins of the opera house.
"What next?" asked Gloria, seating herself on the curbstone.
"Look for more people," said Murray. "Surely we can't be the only frogs
in the puddle."
"Why not?" put in Ben, argumentatively, with a swing of his arm toward
the wreckage-strewn square. "You forget that this catastrophe has
probably wiped out all the animal life of the world, and we seven owe
our survival to some fortunate chance."
The Japanese touched him on the arm. "Perhaps sir can inform inquirer,
in such case, what is curious avian object?" he said, pointing upward.
They heard the beat of wings as he spoke and looked up together to see,
soaring fifty feet past their heads a strange parody of a bird, with
four distinct wings, a long feathered tail, and bright intelligent eyes
set in a dome-like head.
There was a moment of excited babbling.
"What is it?"
"Never saw anything like it before."
"Did the comet do _that_ to chickens?" And then, as the strange creature
disappeared among the forest of spires to the east, the voice of the
lawyer, used to such tumults, asserted its mastery over the rest.
"I think," he said, "that whatever that bird is, the first thing to be
done is find a headquarters of some kind and establish a mode of life."
"How about finding more people?" asked Gloria. "The more the
merrier--and there may be some who don't know how nice castor oil is."
She smiled a metallic smile.
"The fire--" began Ben.
"It would keep some people away."
* * * * *
They debated the point for several minutes, finally deciding that since
those present had all come from the top floors or penthouses of tall
buildings, the search should be confined to such localities. Each was to
take a car--there were any number for the taking around Times
Square--and cover a certain section of the city, rallying at sundown to
the Times building, where Ola Mae and Murray, who could not drive, were
to be left.
Roberts was the first one back, swinging a big Peugeot around with the
skill of a racing driver. He had found no one, but had a curious tale.
In the upper floors of the New Waldorf three of the big windows were
smashed in, and in one corner of the room, amid a maze of chairs
fantastically torn as though by a playful giant, a pile of soft cloths.
In the midst of this pile, four big eggs reposed. He had picked up one
of the eggs, and after weighing the advisability of bringing it with
him, decided he had more important things to do. The owners of the nest
did not appear.
As he emerged from the building, however, the quick motion of a shadow
across the street caused him to look up in time to catch a glimpse of
one of the four-winged birds they had seen before, and just as he was
driving the car away, his ears were assailed by a torrent of screeches
and "skrawks" from the homecomer. He did not look up until the shadow
fell across him again when he perceived the bird was following close
behind him, flying low, and apparently debating the advisability of
attacking him.
Roberts waved his arms and shouted; it had not the slightest effect on
the bird, which, now that it was closer, he perceived to move its hind
wings only, holding its fore-wings out like those of an airplane. He
wished he had a weapon of some kind; lacking one, he drew the car up to
the curb and ran into a building. The bird alighted outside and began to
peck the door in, but by the time it got through Roberts had climbed a
maze of stairs, and though he could hear it screaming throatily behind
him, it did not find him and eventually gave up the search.
The end of this remarkable tale was delivered to an enlarged audience.
Gloria had arrived, bringing a chubby little man who announced himself
as F. W. Stevens.
"The boy plunger?" queried Murray absent-mindedly, and realized from
Gloria's gasp that he had said the wrong thing.
"Well, I operate in Wall Street," Stevens replied rather stiffly.
Ben came with three recruits. At the sight of the first, Murray gasped.
Even in the metal caricature, he had no difficulty in recognizing the
high, bald forehead, the thin jaws and the tooth-brush moustache of
Walter Beeville, the greatest living naturalist. Before dark the others
were back--Yoshio with one new acquisition and Mrs. Roberts, whose
energy paralleled her strength, with no less than four, among them an
elaborately gowned woman who proved to be Marta Lami, the Hungarian
dancer who had been the sensation of New York at the time of the
catastrophe.
They gathered in the Times Square drug store in a strange babble of
phonographic voices and clang of metal parts against the stone floor and
soda fountains. It was Roberts who secured a position behind one of
these erstwhile dispensers of liquid soothing-syrup and rapped for
order.
"I think the first thing to be done," he said, when the voices had grown
quiet in answer to his appeal, "is to organize the group of people here
and search for more. If it had not been for the kindness of Mr. Ruby
here, my family and I would not have known about the necessity of using
oil on this new mechanical make-up nor of the value of electrical
current as food. There may be others in the city in the same state. What
is the--ah--sense of the gathering on this topic?"
Stevens was the first to speak. "It's more important to organize and
elect a president," he said briefly.
"A very good idea," commented Roberts.
"Well, then," said Stevens, ponderously, "I move we proceed to elect
officers and form as a corporation."
"Second the motion," said Murray almost automatically.
"Pardon me." It was the voice of Beeville the naturalist. "I don't think
we ought to adopt any formal organization yet. It hardly seems
necessary. We are practically in the golden age, with all the resources
of an immense city at the disposal of--fourteen people. And we know very
little about ourselves. All the medical and biological science of the
world must be discarded and built up again. At this very moment we may
be suffering from the lack of something that is absolutely necessary to
our existence--though I admit I cannot imagine what it could be. I think
the first thing to do is to investigate our possibilities and establish
the science of mechanical medicine. As to the rest of our details of
existence, they don't matter much at present."
A murmur of approval went round the room and Stevens looked somewhat put
out.
"We could hardly adopt anarchy as a form of government," he offered.
"Oh, yes we could," said Marta Lami, "Hurray for anarchy. The Red Flag
forever. Free love, free beer, no work!"
"Yes," said Gloria, "what's the use of all this metallizing, anyway? We
got rid of a lot of old applesauce about restrictions and here you want
to tie us up again. More and better anarchy!"
* * * * *
"Say," came a deep and raucous voice from one of the newcomers. "Why
don't we have just a straw boss for a while till we see how things work
out? If anyone gets fresh the straw boss can jump him, or kick him out,
but those that stick with the gang have to listen to him. How's that?"
"Fine," said Ben, heartily. "You mean have a kind of Mussolini for a
while?"
"That's the idea. You ought to be it."
There was a clanging round of metallic applause as three or four people
clapped their hands.
"There is a motion--" began Roberts.
"Oh, tie a can to it," said Gloria, irreverently, "I nominate Ben Ruby
as dictator of the colony of New York for--three months. Everybody
that's for it, stick up your hands."
Eleven hands went up. Gloria looked around at those who remained
recalcitrant and concentrated her gaze on Stevens. "Won't you join us,
Mr. Stevens?" she asked sweetly.
"I don't think this is the way to do things," said the Wall Street man
with a touch of asperity. "It's altogether irregular and no permanent
good can result from it. However, I will act with the rest."
"And you, Yoshio?"
"I am uncertain that permission is granted to this miserable worm to
vote."
"Certainly. We're all starting from scratch. Who else is there? What
about you, Mr. Lee?"
"Oh, I know him too well."
The rest of the opposition dissolved in laughter and Ben made his way to
the place by the counter vacated by Roberts.
"The first thing we can do is have some light," he ordered. "Does
anyone know where candles can be had around here? I suppose there ought
to be some in the drug store across the street, but I don't know where
and there's no light to look by."
"How about flashlights? There's an electrical and radio store up the
block."
"Fine, Murray you go look. Now Miss Roberts, will you be our secretary?
I think the first thing to do is to get down the name and occupation of
everyone here. That will give us a start toward finding out what we can
do. Ready? Now you, Miss Rutherford, first."
"My name is Gloria Rutherford and I can't do anything but play tennis,
drink gin and drive a car."
The rest of the replies followed: "F. W. Stevens, Wall Street,"
"Theodore Roberts, lawyer," "Archibald Tholfsen, chess-player," "H. M.
Dangerfield, editor," "Francis X. O'Hara, trucking business," (this was
the loud-voiced man who had cut the Gordian knot of the argument about
organization). "Are you a mechanic, too?" asked Ben.
"Well, not a first class one, but I know a little about machinery."
"Good, you're appointed our doctor."
"Paul Farrelly, publisher," "Albert F. Massey, artist"--the voices
droned on in the uncertain illumination of the flashlights.
"Very well, then," said Ben at the conclusion of the list. "The first
thing I'll do is appoint Walter Beeville director of research. Fact
number one for him is that we aren't going to need much of any sleep. I
don't feel the need of it at all, and I don't seem to see any signs
among you. O'Hara will help him on the mechanical side.... I suggest
that as Mr. Beeville will need to observe all of us we make the
Rockefeller Institute our headquarters. He will have the apparatus there
to carry on his work. Let's go."