The Other Side of Here

SIX

Waldron said: "Sh-h-h-h!"

It is not possible to guess what that man thought. But he lowered his arm—which may have been holding a weapon— and bent his head toward Waldron to try to make out his features in the almost complete blackness of the night. Waldron's fist lashed out. It landed accurately on the point of the other man's jaw. There was not light enough to judge distances. It was either blind luck or a miracle, according to one's estimate of such matters. But the other man staggered, and Waldron hit him again and again in such blazing ferocity of attack that the man did not even cry out.

He collapsed, and Waldron flung himself upon him, his hands groping for his enemy's throat.

A long time later he whispered over his shoulder: "He's got some kind of armor on. Scale armor. I'm guessing that it works like our frequency-packs to protect him. I've got to get it off. Then he'll stiffen like everybody else, I think. And if we hide him—"

He rose, heaving the inert figure to his shoulders. Then a sudden cold sweat came out upon his body. This other man was somehow protected against the thing which made all unprotected humans into inflexible images. All his fellows were protected. They were wholly and permanently safe. But Waldron was preserved from catalepsy only by an improvised, dry-cell contrivance which was not designed to be fought in.

Cold sweat came out on his face as he carried off the man he had battered into unconsciousness. He felt panic for fear that at any second his generator of high-frequency current might stop working. Its flickering tongue of metal seemed horribly fragile. Its twisted connections seemed makeshift and insecure. And having fought, Waldron felt sick and dizzy with the realization of the chance he'd taken in entering into battle while depending on so uncertain a device.

With this odd panic upon him, he did not carry his prisoner far. Fifty feet, perhaps. Then he laid the man down. He pulled off the close-fitting helmet and put it on his own head. He stripped off the close-fitting, curiously worked scale armor and with whispered and urgent instructions to Lucy in case he "froze," he slipped it on. Then he felt curiously secure. Lucy's life depended on his own, and for battle he needed something more certain than dry-cell connections.

He felt the body of his victim. It was hard. This man, a compatriot of Fran Dutt, had yielded to the strange force that had made and still kept the city a place of grotesquely posed pseudo-corpses.

Then Waldron hid his victim and he and Lucy crept away. In whispers he explained to her what he had done. He could not find the weapon that had been pointed at him. Most probably it had fallen from the sentry's hand and now lay somewhere in the darkness, heating itself to destruction, its glow unseen.

He oriented himself carefully by the rumbling of muffled, quietly driven trucks. They were heading toward the business section of the city and they were moving without lights. Their drivers must possess the eyes of cats, Waldron thought. He went quietly along a parallel street, Lucy clinging to his hand. For block after block, they moved through soft and horrible darkness. The stars were not to be seen through the mist that hung overhead. Belleville Avenue joined Broad Street. Waldron peered and listened. It seemed to him that another stream of silenced trucks came from somewhere and joined the first.

They went on. And now and again they saw a vague grayness, or a vague whiteness, or an indefinite difference in the color of the sidewalk on which they quietly moved. Those patches of color were human beings, toppled where they had stood. Sometimes there was wreckage on the sidewalks. They passed one place where huge objects, which must have been motor trucks, blocked the sidewalk altogether. The smell of stale, spilled gasoline saturated the air.

They circled that broken mass and plodded on. Gradually, even Lucy ceased to gasp faintly if by chance she trod on a frozen arm ... a leg. Yet they gained a new alertness in avoiding such accidents. And all the while the soft, purring mutter of many motor trucks moved parallel to their course.

"I don't understand," protested Waldron, straining his eyes before and all about him. "They're looting, but they're taking pains to do it silently. They're not using lights so there'll be no glow in the sky. Why? And where is the loot going to?"

There were plausible guesses that could have been made, but he was not equipped to make them, just then. For example, the first reaction to the news of the disaster in Newark had been uncertainty. There had been suspicion that it was the result of some horrible action by the Reds—not too good a guess. There had been guesses that it was the final fruition of all the flying-saucer stories that had been cropping up for years on end. Fran Dutt's compatriots could not be sure that the explanation of a plague would be accepted as the true one. Very probably, the tactic of invisible looting was merely a precautionary measure. A terrified America, convinced that the population of Newark was dead anyhow, in desperation might use an atomic bomb against possible invaders from the stars. Such an action might have been undertaken had activity been observed within the blackedout, silent town.

They came to a wide, open space where a triangular park verged upon the downtown street. It seemed that here the overhanging gray mist let through more starlight, or possibly the dim light was supplied from some other source. In any case the line of trucks could be seen turning and lurching across the soft green sward of the park. They vanished into a great building on the farther side, and none of them seemed to come out again.

"I have a suspicion I know what's going on in that building," murmured Waldron, "but I want to be sure. We'll get around to the back."

It took them half an hour to go the short distance required. This was the part of the city where traffic had been thickest and where stiffened bodies were most numerous everywhere.

Then they came to a place where lights shone. These were not from inside windows. Rather the lights seemed to seep out from rooms within the building. Yet the lights that fell outward was too scant to be seen from afar. For that matter, surrounding buildings would prevent radar detection of the moving trucks.

Waldron moved with infinite caution through the darkness behind the budding. But there would be no watchers. The man whose protective armor he wore had probably been on guard as much to watch against looters finding valuables for their own account as for any other purpose.

Presently Waldron drew his revolver and went quietly to look inside. Lucy followed close.

He flattened himself against a wall and edged to a window from which feeble light came. His hand, holding Lucy's to give her reassurance, closed hard as he took his first glimpse within. Then he drew his head back and motioned for her to peer in.

She gazed into what had been a sort of grand foyer—an exaggerated open ground-floor space, with a twenty-foot ceiling. A very neat concrete floor held specks of marble and mica that glistened. There had been a newsstand with magazines, packaged candy and tobacco, and a soft-drink stand, and there had even been a certain number of plate-glass frames serving as directories. But the revolving door and plate-glass panels had been ruthlessly hacked away. The opening now served as an entrance for motor trucks to run in a growling, unending stream into the building.

The decorative floor was fouled with mud and clay and discolored bits of glass. The sound of motors was a subdued thunder within the enclosure. The trucks kept coming in, moving past men who barked at the drivers in some strange language. The soda fountain had been torn out and hauled away. Ends of the piping still flowed streams of water, to which nobody paid any attention whatever. The newsstand, of course, was destroyed.

But in the room thus enlarged, a platform of rough wooden planks had been built up, perhaps a foot and a half from the floor, with a ramp leading to it. The platform was itself the floor of an open-ended cage. The Sides of the cage were bars of polished metal all of an inch thick, which wound round and round and under the platform to form a hollow spiral—not unlike a gigantic spring—into whose open, farther end the trucks rolled as they mounted the platform.

And in that spiral, they vanished, like the blown-out flames of candles.

They came growling into the huge room. They rolled across the untidy mess their predecessors bad tracked into the building. Then they shifted gears and went ponderously up upon the platform, inside the wide-spaced coil of metal bars. And then they flickered and were not. Truck after truck, loaded with all manner of loot, they filed into this building and into the colossal, cryptic device. And in it they seemed to fade into thin air and were gone....

Heavy copper cables led to the helical cage. A queer, unearthly, bluish wild fire seemed to play all about the platform. A heavy-duty long-haul truck, packed with machinery, rolled up on the platform. It was followed by a smart, light delivery truck from an expensive grocery. The one behind that was worn and dilapidated, with streaks of fabric showing where the tread of the tires should have been.

But each truck was as heavily burdered as its body would hold, and each one was driven by a man who wore curious, scaly armor. And each vehicle rolled upon the clumsy platform inside the coil-like bars, and when it got there it flickered and was not—and then there was room for another.

The flickering fire seemed half solid—no, not half solid but half phantomlike. It shimmered in an uncanny fashion, in an incalculable combination of many rhythms. At times Waldron had the feeling that it was not merely flame or luminosity. It was something else.

He watched one certain spot. The blue glow came and went. But when it was present and when it was strongest, it had a definite pattern impressed upon it. That pattern moved. Presently Waldron saw a man's face in it. It came back and the man had shifted his position. It looked almost as if colored motion pictures were being thrown upon a screen of smoke which wavered and vanished and appeared again irregularly. It was as if something impressed a deep-blue tint upon all the projected image, and the smoke which served as screen appeared only in patches and flecks, and nowhere showed a complete picture.

Lucy drew back to look bewilderedly at him. The light that came out of their peephole showed his face clearly enough. His eyes were glowing in deep satisfaction.

"Steve!" she whispered. "I don't understand!"

"Those pictures you see," he whispered in reply, "they're actually views of Fran Dutt's world—of the other side of here. The trucks go through and small bits of light come back. We're seeing where Fran came from. In case of need, now, we might even invade that world to get back the people and things that have been carried there."

He watched an instant longer. Knowing or guessing at the full meaning Waldron meant to convey, Lucy gazed again at the fragmentary scenes. Her father, Waldron said, was most likely in that world she now saw in fragments of bluish-tinted scene. She looked upon an enigmatic planet which was not Earth and yet was Earth, which was in what might be called a fourth dimension and yet was bounded absolutely by the common three. She gazed with totally illogical intensity as if hoping for a sight of her father.

But the shimmering, flickering vision, such as might come from a television set with something not working quite right in its innards, showed only scraps of what was to be seen. She saw torches flaring—but only intermittently. Once she saw a truck which was of Earth. She even remembered its huge and sleekly shining shape. It had rolled up on the platform and vanished a bare two minutes since. Now she saw its image in those phantom bluish flames, with men swarming about it. It had vanished and yet it existed. It did not exist on this earth, but it did exist on another earth which was in the same space as this earth.

In a low voice, Waldron said: "We'll go."

Again he led the way. But now it was Lucy who kept a wary watch. Waldron seemed so engrossed in the meaning of what he had seen that he would have walked straight toward the line of trucks if she had not stopped him. That, of course, was after they had moved through blackness well away from the building of the helix and the platform.

But at her whispered word he came back to himself. Then he was all awareness of the crime and the silence which spread in every direction save where the truckloads of loot moved toward envanishment.

They've got a line of trucks coming down from Belleville and another one out yonder." He waved his arm in the blackness. They can loot only so far, or the military cordon around the town will hear. What I've got to do is—" Then he said half aloud to himself: "Professor Hamlin will do! Lucy, I know where he lives. He's a big enough name to make anybody listen, and he'll have to accept what I can tell him. I can prove it. We find him and I explain—"

"Steve! He's—he's like everybody else—"

"Naturally! But if I can't revive him I'm in a bad fix, and if I can it's conclusive. The first thing is to get to him. We have to edge around..."

He chose a new course. But he was no less absorbed in the meaning of the thing he had seen. Up to this moment, all the events dating from the first phone call from Fran Dutt had seemed ominous. Bit by bit they did fit into a sort of hypothesis he had built up. But now he had seen something which made that hypothesis quite different from a guess. Now he knew it was an explanation—the explanation of all that had happened.

He talked under his breath as he and Lucy fumbled then-way through the blackness of the immobilized city. The tumbled figures they stumbled upon and the disasters they skirted were not gruesome, now. They were inspiring of horror and of a monstrous fury. Waldron filled in what he knew with what he had guessed before. From there he went on to what could not be proved by evidence but which by the nature of things had to be accepted as true.

There was another planet occupying the same space as Earth. Straussman's Theory was correct. This other planet must be very nearly the same size, and it must contain the same elements in the same proportions. Undoubtedly, its atmosphere and oceans and clouds resembled those of Earth. And Waldron, stumbling as silently as he could through the stillness of death, grew utterly absorbed in speculations in his own specialty of biology.

If there were occasional interchanges of biological specimens, the existence of animal and plant species on Earth without any clear line of ancestry could be understood. It was certainly conceivable that such exchanges had taken place in cataclysms of one sort or another. In such a case, the peopling of one world from the other could be accounted for, and the fact that Fran Dutt and his compatriots were human would be accounted for. As a matter of scientific theorizing, Straussman's Theory could even be right in more than merely claiming that there could be two worlds existing in the same place at the same time. There should be three, at least. There might be six or eighteen or fifty-four....

While Waldron talked, he made a huge circling movement around the part of the city receiving the immediate attention of the men in scale armor. However, the prospects he envisioned went beyond the mere reversal of the monstrous crime which surrounded him.

There'll be worlds to explore," he said hungrily. "Great globes, quite as big as this, with continents and oceans unmapped and still unknown. There'll be creatures such as we've never dreamed of, and fruits no man has ever tasted, and there will be colonies to create and grow, and there need never again be war with more worlds for nations to expand in...."

Lucy said: "Sh-h-h!"

She pointed. Ahead of them was a curious dull-blue glow. Although bright enough to see by, it made no glare which would be noted either on the gray mist which filled the city's streets or on the sides of houses.

Waldron stood stock-still. He heard voices, speaking that unintelligible language which he'd heard spoken only by men wearing suits of peculiar scale armor. A voice snarled something, in an arrogant harshness that could make one's hackles stand. Another voice replied in fawning humility. There was a snapping sound and a whimpering, brief cry. The arrogant voice came again, commanding. Then silence.

Another voice broke in. By its tone it was making a jest, and the voice which had been so arrogant replied in the manner of one speaking to an equal. There were small stirrings, as from men moving. Another humble voice. The arrogant one again, harsh as before.

Waldron put Lucy behind him and gestured for her to stay where she was. He moved forward, taking infinite pains to make no noise. He brought his revolver up. The blue glow enabled him to avoid a group of tumbled figures which he knew were the lawful inhabitants of Newark, now immobile and frozen on the ground. He reached the corner and peered carefully around it.

He saw the marquee of a movie theater reaching out over the sidewalk. The title of a motion picture was spelled out in letters intended to be illuminated; the name of an actress of proven fascination showed even larger.

But there was movement here. The light was inside the entrance to the theater. At the sidewalk there was a small truck, waiting. There were piled-up human figures in the truck and no men were among them.

In the foyer of the theater stood two slim and arrogant figures. Each carried, as if it were a cane, a slender stick with half a dozen snaky filaments at one end. Something at the tip of each filament glittered metallically. The pair wore the strange scaly armor which protected the looters of the town. They seemed youthful officers or nobles of the corps of looting men. Other, heavier-set, stickless figures brought more figures from the inside of the theater. The figures were, invariably, the frozen, stiffened figures of young girls who had been in the audience of this theater when all the city was stricken cataleptic.

Blind fury rose in Waldron, so that for a moment ho could barely see anything at all. Blood pounded savagely in his temples. At first, there were three of the burdened men in view. They were loading stiffened figures into the truck. Unburdened, they paused before the two slim, armored men and cringed before scuttling back into the motion picture house. It seemed as if that abject shrinking of the body were a standardized thing, equivalent to a military salute. They disappeared into the theater.

The two superiors remained in elegant idleness, talking together in their cryptic language. A man came out, bringing another girl.

The two superiors inspected her amusedly. One pulled off her hat, to see her face more clearly. Another girl was carried, out. The two superiors began gaily to dispute the division of the truckload of movie patrons.

Waldron felt a hand on his arm. Lucy had followed. She whispered shakenly: "Steve! What are they going to do?"

"Load them on the truck," said Waldron icily, under his breath, "and take them to their own world. They'll revive them there, I suppose, as wives or slaves. They've just divided them—all but these last two. They're arguing about them now."

The debate between the two superiors was amused and bantering and incredibly enraging. The second girl, when frozen, had been smiling faintly at something on the theater screen. The two slim, armored figures argued amiably over her. One of them apparently proposed something like a toss-up.

One of the underlings stumbled with his burden. He brushed ever so slightly against one of the two young lord-lings. And that lordling rasped an order. The offender—he had cringed automatically when his offense was committed-moaned a little. But he put down the girl he had carried. He stood still, his eyes closed. And the limber, cane-like thing with the tentacles on its ends flashed up. It struck viciously upon the unprotected face of the subordinate armored figure. The metal tips of the lashes—the cane was suddenly clearly a metal-tipped whip of many strands—made deep gashes. Blood spurted. The whip struck again and again....

Waldron went around the corner. His revolver flashed. It flashed again, and the reports were incredibly loud in the silence of the dead city.

The slender man with the upraised whip faltered in his stroke and collapsed. The other uttered a choked cry of such unbelieving fury that it was not even articulate. He snatched at his waist.

Waldron shot him too. Then he whirled upon the other, subordinate, obedient figures. They squealed and fled. And it seemed uncanny to hear the echoes of Waldron's shots reechoing in the motionless street, and to hear the squealings of the frightened underlings as they fled in every direction.

"Now I've done it!" said Waldron savagely. "I've really done it! Get in the truck, Lucy. We're going to get a long way from here."

He helped her into the truck and fumbled for the switch and starter. It seemed to him that the sound of shooting would never cease to echo. Certainly, he had a crawling conviction that figures moved toward him from everywhere in the darkness, and that armed men moved swiftly to lay traps for him.