The Frosted Death

CHAPTER XVI Flame That Failed

In the tarpaper shack where a new world war was being born, there was a huge refrigerator. It was electric, run from the log cabin’s efficient electric plant. It was necessary for preserving the chopped meat with which the trays on the worktables, in which the mold was reproducing constantly, were periodically refilled.

Mac and Josh had gone regularly to the refrigerator to get more meat. Mac had hatched a plan from this.

The big white box had its motor in the bottom, and the motor was exposed by opening the bottom door, like a cupboard door. The motor was not of the newest type; it was not in a sealed case. Wiring was exposed.

About every half hour it was necessary to go to the refrigerator. That made quite a few trips. And on every trip, Mac left some of the collodion, used for sealing the little glass capsules, near the terminal of the refrigerator motor where the wires were fastened.

Collodion is pyroxilin, or guncotton, dissolved in ether.

Mac had quite a bit of the stuff in the lower compartment of the enameled white box. Even Josh hadn’t noticed what he was doing, so furtively had the Scot opened the lower door a little at the times when he opened the upper, regular one, a lot.

So Mac asked him, in a slightly roundabout way:

“How would you like to burn to death?”

Josh smiled a little, lead-colored lips losing a bit of their grim straightness. The unhealthy color of his lips was produced by wiping on them dust from the floor, from time to time. This was to convince any person coming in to look things over, that Josh and Mac had indeed been made into the robots they resembled by Veshnir’s manipulations with the glass tube.

“Naturally,” Josh retorted, “I don’t want to burn to death.”

“If you could send this death factory and all the frosted death in it up in flames with you, would you risk it?”

“Certainly!” said Josh, without a moment’s hesitation.

“Then rrrisk it ye shall,” said the Scot, burring the r as he did when strong emotion seized him.

Josh looked puzzled.

“Next trip I make to the refrigerator,” said Mac, “will start the fireworks. And I mean fireworks! We have one chance. Perhaps a section of the wood wall will burn enough, before we’re roasted alive, to let us break on through to the open air.”

Some of Josh’s unnautral color became natural. But he nodded steadily.

Mac looked around. The ten automatons were busy at their deadly task. None paid any attention to him. Indeed, none would — unless he tried one of the two things they’d been ordered to prevent: try to get out the shack door, or try to stop working.

The Scot went to the refrigerator, opened the regular door for more chopped meat, and at the same time stealthily opened the bottom door. He slid his bony right hand in, grasped the electric cables going to the refrigerator motor.

He yanked hard.

There was blue flame as the wires pulled free and short-circuited. Following that so instantly as to seem simultaneous, there was a soft roar as the collodion ignited.

It spurted flame in a solid sheet around the motor and out the open door. Mac had leaped back, but no man could be fast enough. He gasped with the pain of singed face and hands.

The floor or rough planks was a solid sheet of fire almost before Mac could get back to Josh. And then a curious and terrible thing occurred. That was — the actions of the ten robots with the tragically deadened brains.

They couldn’t think any more. Only their involuntary nervous systems were spared by the ravages of the mold. They couldn’t grasp situations and act on them any more. They simply stared uneasily at the flames.

Deep instinct stirred in them. The dread of fire goes back a million years. They were vaguely afraid. But they didn’t know what to do about this. There had been nothing told them, when Veshnir left, about what to do in the event of a fire.

So they stared at the rapidly growing flames, coughed in the smoke, and milled uncertainly around the tables. A few fumbled with their routine tasks. A few more went a step or two toward the door, but came obediently back. And none tried to stamp out the flames.

“Poor devils,” said Mac. “They’ll die like horses in a burning stable, without sense enough to try to get out into the open air.”

“They’re doomed anyway,” said Josh gently. “And it is better like this, even if we go, too, than that these scores of thousands of little death bombs be released on European cities.”

They couldn’t take the heat standing up any more. They lay down — and watched the wall near the refrigerator. That section was blazing hardest. It was there that they might have the greatest chance of bursting through flame-weakened timbers.

But they were never to know whether the chance would have brought failure or success.

On the submarine, the captain had had a quite natural thought. Or, rather, a sequence of thoughts.

One was that, safe as the whole plan seemed, there was always a slight chance of something going wrong. The sub might be spotted and investigated. Something might go wrong at the building where the frosted death was being cultivated and stored in thin glass. Above all, something might go wrong in negotiations with that man, Veshnir.

A man who would see thousands of his countrymen die helplessly, for money, could not be trusted. Veshnir might receive the balance of the huge payment for his white death, and then try to refuse delivery till still more money was paid. After receiving money, he might try to stall till he could contact other European powers and sell them the white death, which would checkmate the glorious plans of the nation to which the sub captain owed allegiance.

There were many slips possible between now and the time when the completed store of glass capsules was ready to be packed on the sub.

And there was one very simple way to take insurance against some of them.

Why wait till the manufacture was completed? There were almost enough glass capsules in that little shack, now, to accomplish their plans. Why not take aboard what had been made, to date, and then just keep loading as the capsules were sealed and racked?

Then, if anything came up, the sub could dive and head for home with whatever they had on board, and all would be well. Matter of fact, it was entirely possible that he might get enough for their needs before Veshnir returned and found out what was happening. Then they could waive that final, huge payment to him, altogether.

The commander sent eight men to the tarpaper shed to bring back all the capsules ready for packing.

The eight got to the shack just as smoke began to seep from the rough cracks between planks, and spiral up in the clear morning air.

With a wild curse in his foreign, guttural tongue, the leader of the eight charged to the door, unbolted it, and rushed into the building.

If the crackle of flames hadn’t been so loud, Mac and Josh might have heard the approach and continued to act like the robots they pretended to be. But they hadn’t heard, were not warned, and hence were caught off base.

The leader of the squad rushed into a room in which ten men acted like dead things, with entire lack of sense in their dull eyes; and two acted like normal humans. The two were in a corner, watching the flaming wall. As clearly as if the fact had been shouted, the squad leader knew that these two were responsible for the trouble. He jumped toward them.

“Josh!” yelled Mac, knowing it was all up, “hold ’em. If we can keep ’em from getting after the fire for just a little longer—”

But that couldn’t be done, either. There were too many. Eight to two!

Mac’s fists, like mallets of bone, swung with a desperation that made him insensible to pain. Josh fought like a black cat. But with a machine-like precision that almost reminded them of the automatons still huddling stupidly by the worktables, the eight surrounded them and methodically cut them down.

The men from the sub stamped the fire out. Then one, with a harsh oath, drew out his service automatic and aimed it at Mac’s unconscious head.

“No!”

The squad leader had a spark of imagination. Also he had a mighty fury that these two had almost wrecked the plans of his country. They deserved something worse than quick death for that.

He took one of the thousands of glass capsules in the storage tacks, unhurt by the flames on the other side of the room. He came back to where the Scot and the Negro lay. The other men were grinning now.

The man dashed the glass capsule between Mac and Josh on the floor.

From it, like a genie from a magic bottle, came the almost invisible, grayish cloud of death spores. They did not hover long.

The eight men from the sub had backed as far from the capsules as they could. But they needn’t have worried. The frosted death settled on the nearest victims always, and from then on could be dislodged only by contact.

The entire contents of the capsule sifted down over Josh and Mac.

“Now,” said the man from the sub, “they will have a few hours to think over what they tried to do, and regret it.”

On the submarine, the captain saw the spiral of smoke rising from the plant. He whirled to the speaking tube.

“All hands! To the building in the woods!”

Two men were left aboard as guards, but the rest, nineteen including the commanding officer, went hastily ashore.

The smoke wasn’t spiraling upward any more. It seemed that the trouble at the death shop had been overcome. But it only confirmed the captain’s thought: get aboard what capsules already were prepared, at once.

In the building, the eight were already turning to the storage racks, to lift trays of capsules. And on the floor nearby, Josh stirred a little in his unconsciousness, and moaned. But for a little while longer his senses were in an oblivion that was merciful.

Not for a little while more would they realize that in a few hours they would be like the other victims of the frosted death; that over them was forming the fine white stuff, like powdered sugar, that would turn them to snow men.

There had been no chance for quick wits, and medicated felt pads, to save them this time!