"Like what?" Durstine asked bitterly. "Like quarantining the schools
and the playgrounds?"
Thorsen nodded grimly. "And the parks? And all back yards and front
yards?"
Durstine picked it up again. "And empty lots and all sidewalks and
streets and public buildings and the whole damned outdoors plus the
indoors?"
The enormity of the problem began to sink into my tired brain. In the
space of weeks, more than 30 million i-Guns were sold in the United
States alone. Multiply that figure by the number of times each was
fired. Ten? Fifty? A hundred times? Only God knew how many billion
nails, tacks, screws and rivets were launched into limbo, and were now
just beginning to return--invisible at first--to skewer the American
people.
Wherever kids had played--and that was virtually everywhere--death was
hidden. And the semi-visible particles would keep emerging for weeks,
in the order that they were shot into the other dimension. Worse yet,
at the slow rate of emergence, it would be months or years before the
metallic flotsam returned completely and dropped to earth!
A man could protect himself only by remaining motionless. But society
was geared to motion, fast, space-covering motion. The nation would
starve to death, if everyone didn't go insane first and tear themselves
to pieces running around.
"We've got to get the secret of that extractor out of Calvin Baxter,"
I said. "If we can discover the principle, we can build large models,
like a vacuum cleaner--"
* * * * *
Getting Baxter into City Hospital and finding a competent surgeon in
good enough condition to perform the delicate operation, took almost
twenty-four hours. The hospital resembled an abattoir, the corridor
floors slick from the drippings of fresh blood, as people seeking help
wandered frantically from floor to floor.
Somehow we managed to impress upon the staff the fact that Baxter had
priority, and we were allowed on the operating floor, which was guarded
at all entries.
Sick with exhaustion, I waited with Durstine. Thorsen was impressed
into duty immediately, and that was the last we saw of him. It was a
good many hours before they called us into the operating room. I won't
try to describe the sight in detail. Surgeons and nurses hovered over
tables, weaving like drunken butchers in blood-soaked aprons. In one
corner, on a cot, Baxter lay with his head and shoulders propped up
high. His feet hung over the end at least fourteen inches. A single
sheet covered him.
The top of his skull was bandaged, and he looked even paler than
before. A doctor and one nurse stood on either side of him. As we came
in the doctor said, "I've been told of the problem. We've done all we
can, but this man is dying. I think we can bring him to consciousness
for a few minutes. It's a terribly cruel thing to do, and I'm not sure
he will be coherent. Are you sure you want me to try?"
"It's his invention that brought on all of this," I said. "If there's
any solution to it, he has it in his head."
"Very well."
He did things with a hypodermic needle while the nurse rigged an oxygen
tent. The smell of ether and blood made me sicker. My throat was dry,
and I remember wishing I hadn't drunk Durstine's whiskey. As we stood
waiting the humid air felt almost unbearably hot, and I had difficulty
focussing my eyes.
Durstine looked terrible, hollow-eyed, unshaven, but he seemed in
better shape than I. It was he who caught the first flicker of Baxter's
eyes and dropped to his knees. The color came back to the scientist's
face in a rush of pink, and his chest heaved with deep breathing.
"Can you hear me?" Durstine began.
* * * * *
An hour later Baxter was dead as predicted. And so was all hope of
removing the lethal debris with his other invention. The "extractor"
didn't work, he had told us. Yes, he'd been trying to reverse the field
to retrieve the metallic objects from the other dimension, _but the
experiment was a failure_!
Durstine took my arm. "Come on, Gene. We've done all we can. I know one
safe place--a place where no kids ever played."
"Yeah, I know," I said with a tongue two sizes too big. "The nearest
bar. The damned kids! They've murdered us! Leo Baxter and the damned
kids!"
Things were turning gray, but I remember the chief catching me by the
shoulder and jerking me around. Too late I remembered about his little
Jerry and the agony my words must have carved in his heart. I wished
he'd slug me, but he didn't. He looked at me for a long minute and
said something I don't remember, because the fog closed in--a hot, dry
fog that swept into my brain and blacked out the light. I don't even
remember falling.
The last thought I had was, _the fever! I've got it. And Thorsen said
there were no more antibiotics or drugs left in the city._
* * * * *
Some weeks later it was a surprise but no pleasure, to discover I was
still alive. Through the smoke of my unfocussed eyes I could tell that
my "private" room was occupied by at least a dozen other patients. Some
were on cots and some, like me, simply lay on the floor with a blanket
over them.
I had one 30-second visit from the doctor before Durstine came to take
me away. The doc said simply, "You're a lucky man, Lieutenant. We
didn't save many 'fever' patients after the drugs ran out."
The chief brought a couple of boys in blue with a stretcher to haul me
out. I was amazed to discover that automobiles were still moving about
the streets--not many, but a few. I was too sick and exhausted to talk
during the ride.
Durstine rode in back with me, a hand on my shoulder. "Don't worry,
Gene," he said. "You're going to be all right. And we've got this thing
pretty well licked."
He looked into my eyes and read the question I was too weak to speak
aloud.
"No," he said, "we didn't figure out Baxter's extractor. But we do have
a successful detector, and all we have to do now is use it--then hang a
tin can or an old ketchup bottle on each speck of metal for a marker.
Yeah, the country's going to be cluttered up like a hanging garbage
dump for a long time, but if you can see 'em you can dodge 'em."
A detector? Why, they'd have to equip every person in the country
with one! And surely nothing less than an electronic, radar-type
gadget could detect the microscopic particles as they first began to
emerge--the kind that had riddled my intestines and given me the fever
without even leaving a mark on my skin.
"I know what you are thinking," Durstine said. His face was gray and
drawn, but he wore a faint smile. "It was simple when somebody thought
of it. What would be cheap enough to distribute universally, yet
effective enough to give you positive warning? You see, these tiny
particles are so fine at first that you can fan the air with a plank
and never know when one passes through."
He raised me up from the stretcher and let me look out the window of
the police ambulance. Through squinted eyes I made out a strange
sight. A thin scattering of pedestrians was moving slowly on the
sidewalks, winding their ways among a random collection of floating tin
cans and inverted bottles.
When we stopped for a red light I watched a young woman in a business
suit step between a whiskey bottle head-high, and a bean can about
knee-high, and then proceed gingerly waving a colored sphere ahead
of her. This sphere, about eighteen inches in diameter, suddenly
disappeared. She stopped abruptly and began shouting. Before the
traffic light turned green, a man came up with an empty motor oil can
and placed it on the sidewalk, under the point she indicated in the air
before her.
Durstine explained, "When that speck gets large enough to support it,
that can will be hung on it. Meanwhile, other people are forewarned
that the air over the can is out-of-bounds, so they won't waste
detectors on it."
As he spoke, the young woman was fishing another "detector" from her
purse. It was a limp bit of something which she placed to her lips and
inflated until it was a foot-and-a-half in diameter, then she tied off
the neck and proceeded down the walk waving it before her in great
vertical sweeps.
It was as simple as that.
Our undoing had been an 85-cent kid's toy. And our salvation was a
penny-balloon!