Karson was creating a superman to fight the weird
super-monsters who had invaded Earth. But he was
forgetting one tiny thing--like calls to like.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_Peter Karson was dead. He had been dead for some time now, but
the dark blood was still oozing from the crushed ruin of his face,
trickling down into his sodden sleeve, and falling, drop by slow drop,
from his fingertips. His head was tilted over the back of the chair at
a queer, unnatural angle, so that the light made deep pools of shadow
where his eyes had been._
_There was no sound in the room except for the small splashing the
blood made as it dropped into the sticky pool on the floor. The great
banks of machinery around the walls were silent. I knew that they would
never come to life again._
_I rose and walked over to the window. Outside, the stars were as
before: tiny, myriad points of light, infinitely far away. They had not
changed, and yet they were suddenly no longer friendly. They were cold
and alien. It was I who had changed: something inside me was dead, like
the machinery, and like Peter._
_It was a kind of indefinable emptiness. I do not think it was what
Peter called an emotion; and yet it had nothing to do with logic,
either. It was just an emptiness--a void that could not be filled by
eating or drinking._
_It was not a longing. I had no desire that things should be otherwise
than they were. I did not even wish that Peter were not dead, for
reason had told me that he had to die. That was the end of it._
_But the void was still there, unexplainable and impossible to ignore.
For the first time in all my life I had found a problem that I could
not solve. Strange, disturbing sensations stirred and whispered within
me, nagging, gnawing. And suddenly--something moved on the skin of my
cheek. I raised a hand to it, slowly._
_A tear was trickling down my cheek._
* * * * *
Young Peter Karson put the last black-print down and sighed with
satisfaction. His dream was perfect; the _Citadel_ was complete, every
minutest detail provided for--on paper. In two weeks they would be
laying the core, and then the metal giant itself would begin to grow,
glittering, pulsing with each increment of power, until at last it lay
finished, a living thing.
Then there would remain only the task of blasting the great, shining
ship out into the carefully-calculated orbit that would be its home.
In his mind's eye he could see it, slowly wheeling, like a second
satellite, about the Earth; endlessly gathering knowledge into its
insatiable mechanisms. He could see, too, the level on level of
laboratories and storerooms that filled its interlocking segments; the
meteor deflectors, the air renewal system, the mighty engines at the
stern--all the children of his brain.
Out there, away from the muffling, distorting, damnable blanket of
atmosphere, away from Earth's inexorable gravitational pull, would be
a laboratory such as man had never seen. The ship would be filled with
the sounds of busy men and women, wresting secrets from the reluctant
ether. A new chemistry, a new physics; perhaps even a new biochemistry.
A discordant note suddenly entered his fantasy. He looked up, conscious
of the walls of his office again, but could see nothing unusual. Still,
that thin, dark whisper of dread was at the back of his mind. Slowly,
as if reluctantly compelled, he turned around to face the window at his
back.
There, outside the window, fifty stories up, a face was staring
impassively in at him. That was the first impression he got; just a
face, staring. Then he saw, with a queer, icy chill, that the face was
blood-red and subtly inhuman. It tapered off into a formless, shriveled
body.
For a moment or an eternity it hung there, unsupported, the bulging
eyes staring at him. Then it grew misty at the edges. It dissolved
slowly away and was gone.
"Lord!" he said.
He stared after it, stunned into immobility. Down in the street
somewhere, a portable video was shrilling a popular song; after a
moment he heard the faint swish of a tube car going past. Everything
was normal. Nothing, on examination, seemed to have changed. But the
world had grown suddenly unreal.
One part of his brain had been shocked into its shell. It was hiding
from the thing that had hurt it, and it refused to respond. But the
other part was going calmly, lucidly on, quite without his volition.
It considered the possibility that he had gone temporarily insane, and
decided that this was probable.
Hardly knowing what he did, he found a cigarette and lit it. His hands
were shaking. He stared at them dully, and then he reached over to the
newsbox on his desk, and switched it on.
There were flaring red headlines.
Relief washed over him, leaving him breathless. He was horrified,
of course, but only abstractedly. For the moment he could only be
glad that what he had seen was terrible reality rather than even more
terrible illusion.
INVADERS APPEAR IN BOSTON.
200 DEAD
Then lines of type, and farther down:
50 CHILDREN DISAPPEAR FROM
PARIS MATERNITY CENTER
He pressed the stud. The roll was full of them.
MOON SHIP DESTROYED
IN TRANSIT
NO COMMUNICATION FROM
ANTARCTICA IN 6 HOURS
STRANGE FORCE DEFLECTS
PLANES FROM SAHARA AREA
WORLD POLICE MOBILIZING
The item below the last one said:
Pacifica, June 7--The World Police are mobilizing, for the first time
in fifty years. The order was made public early this morning by
R. Stein, Secretary of the Council, who said in part:
"The reason for this ... order must be apparent to all civilized
peoples. For the Invaders have spared no part of this planet in their
depredations: they have laid Hong Kong waste; they have terrorized
London; they have destroyed the lives of citizens in every member state
and in every inhabited area. There can be few within reach of printed
reports or my words who have not seen the Invaders, or whose friends
have not seen them.
"The peoples of the world, then, know what they are, and know that
we face the most momentous struggle in our history. We face an enemy
_superior to ourselves in every way_.
"Since the Invaders first appeared in Wood River, Oregon, 24 hours
ago, they have not once acknowledged our attempts to communicate, or
in any way taken notice of our existence as reasoning beings. They
have treated us precisely as we, in less enlightened days, might
have treated a newly-discovered race of lower animals. They have not
attacked our centers of government, nor immobilized our communications,
nor laid siege to our defenses. But in instance after instance, they
have done as they would with us. They have examined us, dissected us,
driven us mad, killed us with no discernable provocation; and this is
more intolerable than any normal invasion.
"I have no fear that the people of Earth will fail to meet this
challenge, for there is no alternative. Not only our individual lives
are threatened, but our existence as a race. We must, and will, destroy
the Invaders!"
Peter sank back in his chair, the full shock of it striking him for the
first time.
"_Will_ we?" he asked himself softly.
* * * * *
It was only two stories down the moving ramp to Lorelei Cooper's
laboratory. Peter took it in fifteen seconds, running, and stumbled to
a halt in front of the door marked "Radiation." She had set her door
mechanism to "Etaoin Shrdlu," principally because he hated double-talk.
He mouthed the syllables, had to repeat them because he put an accent
in the wrong place, and squeezed through the door as soon as it opened
far enough to admit him.
Lorelei, beautiful in spite of dark-circled eyes and a smear of grease
on her chin, looked up from a huge ledger at the end of the room. One
blonde eyebrow arched in the quizzical expression he knew so well.
"What makes, Peter my love?" she asked, and bent back to the ledger.
Then she did a double-take, looked at his face intently, and said,
"Darling, what's wrong?"