HUMANITY'S ARMY
Taylor and Masters raised their arms. They were caught.
"There is nothing you can do now to save yourself, or your
country," Norden said. "Nothing. The spheres will destroy you and
your people. They will destroy every living creature who does not
surrender to my nation. Might will come into its own."
"Are you sure the spheres are so invincible?" Taylor asked.
"Remember, they were expelled from the sun. They must have been
checked on the sun many times, otherwise they would have
destroyed the creatures who opposed them."
"They are greater than anything on the earth," Norden said.
"The spheres are not for the earth. Our battles are not theirs.
By betraying your world to these creatures, you are betraying the
whole human race."
"This is not so!" Norden said, thickly. "I know how to handle
them. Orkins told me. He said he imitated their whistle and they
spared him, while they killed the others in the plant. He didn't
realize the value of his discovery. He was too much of a coward."
Norden beckoned his prisoners to him and disarmed them. He
pointed to the door of the casting room.
"Look!"
In the center of the room was a metal pot used for small
castings. It was filled with molten, glowing metal. Beside it sat
a single orange sphere, spraying the pot with bolts of heat to
keep the contents warm, for the electrical energy that had
supplied the melting pot had long-since been cut off.
In the center of the pot an orange-red bubble was rising from the
metal. A sphere was forming on the surface of the metal.
"The rise of living energy!" Norden said. "Our own kind of life
may have begun ages ago in much the same way. A spore from some
far off world may have drifted here through space, found
conditions just right, and taken root. Thus the spore of the
sun--the whispering spheres--found a set of conditions fitted for
growth. That metal pot is filled with seeds of the spheres. One
by one they will hatch and grow into a force that will bring
extinction to all men, except those of my race. The spheres do
not want the world, they want the sun. We will see that they go
back to the sun, after they have had their sport, killing the
weaklings of your nation."
Taylor shuddered as he looked at the growing sphere. This deep,
intense intelligence, which found sport in killing human beings,
already seemed to be pouring from the depths of its half-formed
body.
"The fact that I am alive, proves my superiority," Norden said.
"Your people ran in terror at the sight of the spheres, but I
bargained with them. I made an alliance."
"You and your superiority!" Masters growled. "If you really were
smart, you'd have counted us. Don't you know there are three of
us who aren't afraid of the spheres?"
As Masters spoke, the point of Pember's bayonet touched the small
of Norden's back. The soldier had crept from the tunnel,
unobserved by Norden, who was engrossed in the mental torture of
his prisoners.
With a cry of rage Norden whirled and fired.
But Taylor had expected such a move. Even as Norden swung around,
the officer sprang, knocking the spy off his feet and spoiling
his aim.
A warning whistle came from the sphere heating the cauldron.
"Back! Out of the doorway!" Taylor shouted, grappling with
Norden. "I'll take care of him!"
Pember obeyed orders. He jumped back, dragging Masters with him.
Taylor wrenched the gun from Norden's hand, just as the spy
landed a jarring blow to the body. Taylor staggered, lost his
balance and dropped the gun.
Norden leaped forward to retrieve the weapon, but Taylor blocked
the move. He drove Norden back with a hard right. The two men
closed in and stood toe to toe, trading blows.
The screaming of the sphere grew louder. The creature by the
metal pot seemed to be calling the others over the town. The
half-formed sphere in the melting pot joined and the entire
building rang with the shrill screams.
Taylor was slowly driving Norden back toward the door of the
casting room. A tentacle of flame reached out from the monster by
the metal pot, but it only circled the men. Apparently it was
afraid to strike, for fear of destroying friend as well as enemy.
Norden's knee came up. Taylor dodged in time to avoid a crippling
blow, but the leg caught him on the thigh, sending him back and
upsetting him on the floor.
With a cry of triumph, Norden dived toward his foe. But Taylor
rolled on his back, doubled his legs and met the hurtling body
with a two-footed kick.
Norden grunted with pain. He staggered back, straight toward the
sphere by the metal pot.
A whistled warning had no effect. The momentum carried Norden
crashing into the orange nucleus of energy. There was a blinding
flash.
A small pile of glowing ashes appeared on the floor.
The whistle of the sphere stopped. It pulsed once. A feeble ray
of heat lashed out toward Taylor, but the bolt halted in mid-air.
A _plop_ cracked in Taylor's ear. The sphere disappeared like a
bursting soap bubble.
"Cap! Are you all right!"
Masters appeared in the doorway behind Taylor.
"Gosh!" His eyes settled on the pile of ashes, the remains of
Norden. He turned to Taylor. "Are you all right, Cap?"
Taylor nodded.
"Where's the sphere?" asked Masters.
"He died of frustration--or sorrow--over having killed the wrong
man," Taylor said grimly. Taylor indicated the half-formed
monster in the pot. "Now we've got to get rid of that one and all
the unhatched spores."
"If that metal pot hatches 'em, we will," said Masters. "We'll
dump the metal."
The undeveloped sphere made no move to launch a deadly bolt
toward the men. Apparently at this stage of incubation the
spheres were harmless.
"Pember!"
"Yes, sir!" the soldier appeared in the doorway, carrying his
bayonetted gun.
"Keep a lookout for other spheres. Masters and I are going to
dump this metal pot."
"Yes, sir!"
An electric motor ordinarily dumped the pot into molds, but this
motor, like everything else electrical in the plant, now was out
of commission. Masters, however, found a block and tackle and
rigged it to a beam above the pot. The hook he attached to the
bottom of the pot.
"Grab hold, Cap!" he said, taking the end of the rope.
Taylor loosened his tunic and seized the rope.
"Heave!" Masters chanted.
The two men strained. Slowly the pot tilted.
Pember, standing at a window, called out over his shoulder:
"They're coming back!"
Above the creak of the pulleys rose the murmuring whisper of the
spheres.
"Heave!" Both men joined in the rhythmic call, putting their
weight on the rope. The pot tilted more.
The half-formed sphere whistled loudly and the spheres circling
over the plant answered.
"Hurry!" Pember urged.
"Heave!" chorused the men on the ropes. The pulleys creaked.
The room suddenly blazed with a brilliant orange glow as a
maddened sphere floated through the hole in the roof. It hung in
the air, pulsating, scanning what was taking place below.
"Heave!" cried the two men. The pot was at an angle. The hatching
sphere screamed to the globe above.
The floating sphere shrieked. Flame danced over its surface.
"It--It's got--eyes!" Masters said, spacing his words with tugs
on the ropes.
"Don't look!" Taylor warned. "Heave!"
Pember faced the sphere. He patted his Garand.
"Give 'im hell, boy!"
He swung the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet whined
off the sphere as if it were steel. Pember jerked his head in
despair. Angrily he fired again. His tin hat slid to one side of
his head at a rakish angle.
"You spawn of hell!" he cried.
Pember lowered his gun. The sphere pulsed ominously. Then the
doughboy charged.
Beneath the brim of his helmet Pember's jaws were set. His
half-closed eyes, glazed by the dazzling light from the sphere,
were two slits of savage determination.
There was something glorious in that charge. It was a soldier
going into battle against hopeless odds. And it was more. The
army of human civilisation at that moment consisted of one buck
private, pitting everything he had against something that even
science could not analyze.
The sudden attack seemed to surprise the sphere. It bounded back,
moving swiftly out of the way of the advancing one-man army.
Pember roared. There were no words in what he shouted. It was
just a cry, the battle cry of humanity.
"Heave!" chorused Taylor and Masters.
They too had a battle cry. Every man was doing his best and would
die doing it, if necessary.
There was a crack and a hiss. A flicker of flame flashed over the
charging soldier. An odor of charred human flesh filled the room.
Then came a new sound, the hissing splash of spilled metal.
The pot was dumped.
Taylor dropped the rope and faced the sphere. He saw the charred
pile of ashes beside the inhuman creature. Nearby was a fused
tube of metal, all that was left of Pember's rifle.
"All right, you devil!" shouted Taylor. "Strike and be damned!
There's one thing you can't fix, and that's the metal pot. Your
spores are dead. Your mistake was in having a metal pot for a
mother!"
Taylor sensed understanding in the sphere. Those eyes that were
not eyes, but windows of the mind, seemed to fade. Flame licked
out again from the monster, but it did not launch toward Taylor.
Nor was Masters the target.
Instead, the flame reached toward the fading yellow hemisphere
and the cooling pool of metal on the floor. There lay the hopes
of the species on this planet, wrecked with a block and tackle.
_Plop_!
The hemisphere exploded like a bubble.
_Plop_!
The mourning sphere disappeared.
_Plop. Plop. Plop._
Three more spheres appeared in the opening in the roof and
vanished.
Masters tugged on Taylor's sleeve.
"Come on! We've got a chance, if we can get to the tunnel!"
Taylor shook his head.
"No need. We're safe now. If they've changed to radio energy, the
big broadcast is on."
The sky was filled with exploding spheres as the whispers sobbed
the tale of the disaster. A score of the energy monsters, bred
from the metal pot overnight, burst in the rays of the rising
sun. Energy, meeting resistance, was changing to something else.
The war of energy and matter might continue on the molten surface
of the sun, but on earth there would be only the wars of ideals.
* * * * *