The shadowy men moved cautiously forward over the rough ground. Their
autogyro had descended with the engine off, and had made but the
faintest rustle, and now they were cursing softly, as branches broke
under their feet with the multiple snaps and cracks of light artillery.
A city-bred crook in the woods at night is a forlorn creature.
Finally they reached the clearing, many bruises were on their shins,
given by unseen rocks that sprang suddenly into a seemingly clear path.
"Any light in the green stuff?" asked Gorilla Mike.
"Nope. That light you can't see isn't on. Must be a hell of a light
you can't see. What good does it do 'em anyway? Course those damn
light-beam traps have some sense, but they don't floodlight the place,"
muttered Shorty.
They approached the fence cautiously, and no sign of the green flame
came from their simple detector. Likewise the fence got no impulse
from them as they came toward it. Presently Mike used a heavy pair of
bolt-clippers, and snipped several wires and rods of steel. He lifted
the lock out of the gate bodily, and opened the way. They filed in
cautiously, turned abruptly to the left, and followed the fence for
nearly seventy-five feet. Then they cautiously set off across the
grounds toward the laboratory building, bulking dim against the light
grey of the clouds racing across the sky. A bright moon beyond threw a
dim radiance on and past them. But they really had little to fear from
any natural light, for as Atkill had learned from the too talkative
Wilson, Warren was much more willing to trust to the abilities of
his electrical and ultra-violet watchers than to those of any human
watchers.
The suitcase which had been humming softly suddenly began clicking
and humming in jumps and starts. Shorty looked down at it dubiously.
Was the thing going wrong now, and leaving them marooned inside the
fence? Suddenly he gave a cry of surprise, and pointed to the hitherto
invisible streak of dirty-white paint. It was flaming with a blinding
brilliance. Atkill had chosen his fluorescent paint well, and it
reacted even to the long ultra-violets Warren was using.
With a curse the men turned to look for the light, to shoot it out. The
scene was dark as before. No faintest glimmer lighted the scene. Shorty
looked at the signal again and doubted. His eyes told him there was no
light. This thing said there was. The suitcase was humming and clicking
madly. The thing was broken. If there was light he could see it.
"Hey, are yuh goin' ta stay all night?" demanded Pete Constanti.
"Is this thing working or not? 'At's wat I wanna know."
"He said yuh couldn't see the light. Let's get out."
"Beat it then," ordered Shorty. The three men turned and raced for the
open gate, taking the shortest route. They hadn't gone ten paces before
a blinding white beam of light caught them, and held them. Constanti
pulled out a long-barreled revolver. He fired twice and the light went
out. They ran on desperately now, and then a third spotlight fell on
them.
It took time to shoot them out, and there were lights in the laboratory
now. But they ran on again, and no more lights struck them. Presently
the open gate stood just before them, wedged open by a piece of rock.
Shorty dived for it, and as his body started to pass through the gate
it seemed to strike something, a something like a very strong sheet
of india rubber. There was nothing but empty space there, but Shorty
bounced back heavily. He sat down even more heavily, and jumped up with
a howl of pain, for there was an out-cropping of bare, rough rock here.
The two following him hesitated in amazement, rushed hurriedly forward,
and gave low cries of astonishment as their hands felt _it_. It was
soft, yet almost as unyielding as a wall of steel padded with thick
rubber. An inch it would yield, then it was immovably fixed. Pete
Constanti had his long-barreled revolver out in an instant, and he
sent three shots whining into the invisible barrier. Each gave a soft
whine as it struck, and a second soft whine as it bounced from the
barrier as from some marvelous spring. Luckily the bullets had not been
aimed straight ahead, but at an angle and they did not return to their
sender. They whined away to strike with a distant plop somewhere on a
rocky out-crop.
"I wouldn't shoot," said a monstrous voice, "because the bullets will
just bounce. Come to the laboratory."
The voice was very loud, and there was a slight mechanical timbre
to it. But also there was a cold, deadly tone that made the three
think of the tales two other men had brought back from this place of
unknown horrors, of invisible walls that bullets merely bounced off,
of invisible lights, and incredible and unknowable things that watched
your every motion. Like trapped animals they hurled themselves at the
barrier. Shorty Grimm hurled the suitcase with its load of batteries
and mechanisms at the invisible wall, and it merely fell harmless.
"Come to the laboratory, immediately," the Voice said.
"Wat we gonna do?" quavered an affrighted Gorilla Mike. "You got us
inta this, for God's sake get us out."
"We--we better go, I guess," Shorty said in a low voice.
Something pushed him from behind, something soft, but unyielding. With
a cry of terror he ran forward, the wall was following them, pushing
them. He ran, but not more than ten paces before he struck another of
those invisible walls.
It was dark, horribly, weirdly dark, but the suitcase still flamed, and
the lights of the laboratory glowed. All he knew was that before and
behind were walls, walls that he could not see, and could not break
through. Desperately he pounded on them, hurled himself against them.
They did not even hurt him. He felt as though he were in some asylum,
locked in a padded cell--a padded cell whose walls he could not see.
He began to laugh. Mike and Constanti looked at him with blank,
fox-like faces. The laugh was very low at first, just a chuckle. Then
more chuckles, then a wild, mad laugh that rang out. His pals could
not understand.
Pete hit him and he fell to the ground. Mike looked on uncomprehending.
Constanti bent over the fallen figure, and in a minute the man was
stirring again.
"T'anks, Pete. God, it's like a padded cell, Pete. Let's go to dat
lab-ra-tory. Maybe they'll let us out."
Anything seemed better than this. They started toward the laboratory,
feeling for the wall, but the wall had moved. The Voice spoke again.
"The walls move with you. You can move toward the laboratory, but in no
other direction."
Presently they stood in the grey-white light that streamed from the
laboratory door. Two great towers rose in the room of concrete, two
half-dismounted things. They looked bare and ruined, like half-cleaned
skeletons. In the center of the room was a great mass of iron, and
around it nestled half a dozen mechanisms with long pointers of
gleaming silver pointing at a glowing ball that floated unsupported
just over the glowing top of the massive iron block. There was a slight
depression under it, as though some acid had eaten at it slowly.
A half-score of men stood just within the doorway, looking out at them.
Another man was seated beside one of the machines grouped about the
central massive block. A tall, powerfully built man, with blond hair
and grey eyes. His face was set and looked unpleasant. His fingers were
working at controls before him. He looked up at them, and threw back a
switch.
"Drop your arms," he ordered.
Half a dozen guns and three heavy knives came into view, to be followed
by three slung-shots. Warren looked at them caustically.
"You're cheating," he smiled, but the smile wasn't pleasant.
"Honest--'at's all we got," objected Constanti.
Warren flipped a switch with another unpleasant smile. Constanti let
out a howl of pain and snatched at something up his trouser leg, as
suddenly Shorty Grimm howled and pulled a tiny automatic from his
sleeve. He dropped it beside the knife Constanti had produced.
"Step back from the weapons," ordered Warren, and as they retreated,
something shimmered for an instant in the light, and a curtain seemed
to roll over the weapons. Warren threw over another switch, and a
series of explosions like Chinese firecrackers rang out, then the smoke
floated away, and there was a little pool of white-hot, sparkling metal
on the smoking ground.
"All right, come in," he ordered. The three gangsters came because they
couldn't do anything else.
"Who sent you?" demanded Warren sharply.
"Aw, we ferget," snarled Grimm.
"That's too bad. You like that padded cell you can't see? Or do you
like this?" Something flashed around them resembling a sheet of water,
and they were standing in the center of a hollow cylinder of milky
light.
The light twisted and flowed in swirling currents.
"Touch it--touch it carefully," suggested Warren. "Better, stick your
flask into it, and hold the neck with your handkerchief."
Constanti complied. He had whisky that was 85% alcohol in that flask.
There was a faint crackling noise as the flask touched the beam, and
the cylinder glowed faintly red for an instant, then relapsed to white.
"Enough--don't put your hand in. Drop that flask." Constanti stared at
it instead. The flask was dripping moisture. It was white with frost,
and drops of a light blue liquid fell from it in slow succession. He
dropped it. The solid silver flask broke like glass, and the whisky
within was a brown, hard substance that was coated with frost in an
instant. It sizzled on the floor, and in a minute was melting and
running away.
"Now--I think you have too much space. I'll close the column. If you
want to talk--talk."
The milky cylinder began to contract, and as it grew smaller the men
within it felt an awful cold come upon them. Their breath began to
show, and their ears grew numb. Swiftly the cylinder became smaller,
and rapidly it grew colder.
[Illustration: _The milky cylinder began to contract, and as it grew
smaller the men within it felt an awful cold come upon them. Their
breath began to show and their ears grew numb. Swiftly the cylinder
became smaller and rapidly it grew colder._]
Presently Grimm saw something else above them. It was a great,
deep-violet roof, and it seemed to be made up of streamers that
fluttered slowly down. It descended, and touched his head. They weren't
streamers, they were more of that padded force.
"Atkill--he sent us," wailed Grimm.
Instantly the cold was gone, the milky cylinder sprang back to its
original size, and the violet streamers vanished.
"How did you pass the fence?" snapped Warren. A delicious warmth seemed
to seep into the chilled men. It was easy to talk and be warm. Nothing
could stop this man of unknown things.
"He gave us somethin' in a suitcase. You held it in your han' and the
fence didn' spot you."
"Where is it?"
"Down on the grounds. I threw it at the wall, an' it just bounced off
it."
"Wait." Warren turned to his instruments. Something fell to the floor
with a soft thud behind them, and the men turned. The suitcase lay on
its side. "Wrecked," said Warren tersely. "Delicate electro-static
counterpoise, probably, eh Putt?"
"Probably," replied the black-eyed man beside Warren.
"Wat saw us?" asked Shorty.
"Your suitcase protected you against any one of our electro-static
detectors, but it couldn't satisfy three at once, and when you were
within range of the fence, and of two other detectors, it quit,"
replied Warren with a grin. "What were you after."
Briefly Grimm told him. Warren looked at Putney, and then at Grimm. He
wrote hastily on a sheet of note paper, signed it, and passed it to
Putney. He too read, then signed. "Good idea," was all he said.
"Take this to Atkill with our compliments. Where is your plane?" said
Warren, passing the sheet in a sealed envelope to Grimm.
Grimm told him. Then something gripped him, something like the soft,
impenetrable wall, but different in that it held him like a monstrous
hand. It lifted him, and he shot through the door, turned, and shot
down the hill, over the fence, and an instant later was standing beside
the plane. The force released him, and was gone. A moment later the
man, his nerves still quivering, saw Constanti flying through the air,
to land gently twelve feet nearer a huge tree. Constanti stumbled, gave
a low moan, and stood up. "Madre de Dios!" he groaned.
They watched something black hurtle through the air. It was headed
exactly for the huge tree. A shrill scream of fear rang out as Gorilla
Mike saw his end at hand. The force that carried him bore him toward
the tree, and suddenly there was a crash, the great tree snapped
over--and fell majestically away from the three men and the machine.
Gorilla Mike scrambled to his feet hysterically crying, unhurt. The
forces were gone.
But it was an hour before their nerves quieted sufficiently to let one
of them take the 'gyro aloft, and toward New York.