The Other Side of Here

SEVEN

Of course, they had a tremendous advantage in their flight. The looters of the city would find it impossible to accept (heir presence. The higher-ups of the scale-armored folk knew of the existence of Steven Waldron and that he had managed to get out of Newark, but that could have been assumed an accident. Also they may have believed his other escapes were the result of his extreme alertness. Always he got away from later plague spots before they were formed.

But the invaders—or the looters—could not imagine that Waldron actually knew how to counteract the weapon or the instrument that had thrown four inhabited places in the stasis of catalepsy. Shots, heard in the night, would seem to the higher-ups to have resulted from one of their underlings firing unfamiliar weapons by accident. Even when some of the squealing, groveling looters babbled of someone killing two noblemen or leaders, Waldron had been wearing authentic scaly armor. There would still be no reason to think that one of the authentic inhabitants of the city was alive. Still less chance existed that it would be believed a single man had dared return to the dead area.

So the small truck went racketing from the scene of the shooting. Twice Waldron flashed on his headlights for guidance and flashed them off again. Such momentary flickerings in the mist above the buildings were not likely to be noticed. In a little while the truck was speeding up the right-hand fork beside Lincoln's statue. A few minutes later, Waldron turned right and stopped to listen for pursuit.

Leaping from the truck, he took some of the stiffened figures from the back and hid them in shadows and in lanes. Then he drove on, stopped and listened—again he disposed of more girls' frozen forms. Then he dodged and twisted and presently arrived at a hillside street where he could see, very far in the distance, the lights of the Oranges and the other communities on beyond. Those lights were not as numerous as usual. Everybody who could run away had done so. But the truck's headlights could be seen where humans were still alive and moving and alert.

Waldron turned on the truck's headlights to their brightest, and he and Lucy fled. But he risked a few brief seconds to flash the light on and off again, three short flashes of light, and three long ones, and three short ones again. Presently men would become aware that there was life in the dead, still city of Newark.

During the racketing flight from downtown, Waldron had kept his original purpose in mind. The placing of the truck had its purpose. Its lights would not be visible from where the looting was busiest. But now or soon there would be a deadly hunt for whoever had killed the two officer-leaders. If it was true that all of them carried metal-tipped whips and used them so arrogantly and mercilessly as Waldron had seen, then it was apparent that a hideous division of castes existed among the invaders. Unbearable brutality was probably practiced upon the lower castes by the higher. Therefore, there was a good chance that the killings would seem more nearly mutiny than the result of an outsider's action. Time might be lost in the attempt to find out who was in revolt. There might be harsh punishments to prevent the idea of mutiny from spreading. The consequence would be to create a greater tendency to mutiny. In short, Waldron might have performed a successful guerilla operation against Fran Dutt's compatriot army.

But his purpose was something more and better than that. He knew his way about the city. Within half an hour after leaving the truck—and actually before it was found and its lights turned off—Waldron had opened an unlocked back door of the residence of Professor Hamlin.

He and Lucy went inside. They had a peculiar, insistent discomfort that they were acting like burglars. This was a private home, and they did not feel they had a right to be in it. Moreover, it was even blacker inside the house than outside. The sensation of intrusion and furtiveness in the dark was almost intolerable. It was not until Lucy, remembering the hour at which the "plague" had struck, suggested the dining room that they were able to find the professor.

Waldron struck a match, while Lucy drew the heavy curtains which the elderly scientist's wife had put up a good ten years before her death. There was a candelabra stick on a mantel and Waldron lighted a candle.

Professor Hamlin, portly, white-haired and austere, was pompous even in his own home. He had been seated at table, in the act of raising a spoonful of soup to his lips, at the moment he was stricken lifeless. His arm had frozen halfway. His lips were pursed to open. He looked grotesque. He looked ridiculous. The soup had dried in the spoon. The plate before him contained only a gummy mess.

Waldron unslung his own high-frequency pack, depending only on the scaly armor for his own continued life. He fitted the pack to the body of the portly scientist whose assistant he had been. He turned it on.

The scientist moved in the candlelight. He continued the gesture he had begun forty-eight hours before. His spoon was empty. Then his eyes widened in stark, blank incomprehension. The lights were out. He became aware of the single flickering candle in the room. And there was a strange figure in improbable armor, and a girl with dusty clothing....

It was minutes before he could recognize Waldron clothed in the eccentric garb. It was a long time before he could believe Waldron's story. He had no sense whatever of any time-lapse. It was necessary for him to peer out of his house at unlighted streets and dark houses, listen to the horrifying silence of Newark, before he could begin to believe. Then he found a flashlight and discovered his servants' stone-hard bodies, and he was sure they were dead....

Lucy convinced him, finally, by indicating the motionless tropical fish in the professor's aquarium. She lifted one out and held it in her hand. Suddenly revived by the high-frequency current, it flapped wildly. She dropped the fish back into the tank and it was still and frozen again.

Then the scientist really listened, while brushing clouds of dust from his sleeve.

"I see," he said profoundly, at last. "What you tell me is impossible according to all preconceived notions, but it is apparently true. Straussman seems to have been right. I know that Professor Blair was inclined to accept his theories. My dear, have you heard anything of your father?"

Lucy said bitterly: "He's in that other world we saw—the one the trucks all go to."

"I shall go," said Professor Hamlin soberly, "to this military cordon you have told me about. I shall identify myself. And I will be proof that some hundreds of thousands of people are not dead. In this contrivance you have put on me, Steven, I shall have evidence that others can be revived. I should think that a regiment or two of soldiers, equipped as I am, would handle things nicely, eh?"

"They should," said Waldron dourly. "But you'll have to be extremely careful, Professor! Everybody's trigger-happy!"

Professor Hamlin rose with dignity. With even greater dignity he put on his hat and a light topcoat. Lucy blew out the candle and with Waldron followed him out of the house.

The utter darkness of Newark and the fainter glare in the sky which was New York and Jersey City were further proofs of the incredible. Almost beyond the professor's front door they came upon a pathetic bundle on the ground. A boy and girl—high-school children—had been talking together. They had fallen side by side. Professor Hamlin recklessly struck a match. He saw their faces.

"Girls," said Waldron grimly, "are being loaded on trucks and carried to that other world. This girl is pretty enough—"

Professor Hamlin said with dignity: "It shall be stopped!"

And Waldron and Lucy walked with him downhill and toward the place where there would have to be soldiers, watching lest anyone go into or try to come out of a city that seemed both dead and deadly.

It was a long walk, and Professor Hamlin grandly took the initiative. He made Waldron feel that he was merely a subordinate, again. But he did ask questions, and he did agree that for them to move on foot was preferable to taking any of the available cars. A car could be heard in motion, especially when starting. But toward the end of the hike his feet were beginning to hurt. But then, a little later, they saw a bonfire burning in the middle of a street. All the houses, all along the way, had been dark and still.

"Ha!" said Professor Hamlin profoundly. "There is the cordon—and about time! I shall approach it alone, Steven. And I think I can promise you that within twelve hours there will be adequate action taken to end this terrible catastrophe."

"Better not mention my name," said Waldron cynically. "At least not until you have to. I'm guilty by association with what's happened here."

Professor Hamlin shook hands, impressively.

"And be sure to call ahead when you go up to the cordon," Waldron added. "They've orders to shoot anybody who tries to come out. You'll have to argue with them."

"They will not shoot me," said Professor Hamlin, confidently.

But they did.

Waldron saw it happen. The portly figure of the scientist moved away from him through the darkness. A long time later, they heard him speak. It sounded peculiar, as if he were raising his voice in the manner of a lecturer filling a large hall.

There was a sudden flare of light. A spotlight on a car flicked on. A thin lance of light shot out and outlined the impressive, dignified figure. The professor waved his hands and walked forward. Somebody shouted back to him. The tone was commanding. Professor Hamlin halted. The other voice rasped commands, obviously commands that the man retrace his steps. Professor Hamlin replied indignantly. He moved deliberately, impressively forward.

There was an outburst of tiny sparks: the tearing rat-tat-tat of small-arm fire. Outlined in the spotlight beam, Professor Hamlin fell and lay still.

The two far back in the darkness were stunned. The spotlight flickered about, searching. It stopped at one spot where something could be mistaken for a human figure. The guns rasped again. The object was a tree trunk. The spotlight continued to search.

Waldron drew Lucy into hiding. Presently he said in a rage-thickened voice: "The news broadcasts will report a man trying to come out of the city and being shot down. The outside world will think that somebody recovered from the 'plague' and tried to leave the city and had to be shot. Fran Dutt's gang, though, will think their single traitor got his when he tried to get away, after killing two of their officers or leaders. So all we've done has been to get Professor Hamlin killed!"

A moment later he added savagely: "They may have heard the shots, back in the city. We'd better get somewhere else." They moved away.

The situation as a whole looked as desperate as at any time before. Waldron was not confronted with a state of affairs that some one line of brilliant reasoning could break down to complete solution. There aren't many such states of affairs in real life. In scientific research, in particular, Waldron knew of the deadly drudgery which prefaces every accomplishment. The problem which the world was calling the "new plague" could not be abandoned. And though it was disheartening and enraging to find that one's efforts to combat the cause of the catastrophes had gotten somebody else killed, quite automatically Waldron's mind turned doggedly to a new approach. Only there wasn't any new approach possible.

They were two blocks away when Waldron said grimly: "I'm fresh out of ideas. Let's find a car with a radio and see if the news will offer anything."

So they searched, while they moved at a right angle to the cordon about the city. But most cars, obviously, were smashed to a greater or lesser degree. They had stalled and their batteries had run down because the ignition had remained on. Other cars had been parked. And they could not be entered without smashing windows, which would be a noise-making proposition. Some of the highly organized looting force would assuredly have been sent to investigate the shots, especially after the killing of two leaders outside of the movie theater on Market Street. Even now there probably was a frantic, furtive search in progress.

The silence of the city became increasingly tense and horrible. There was now no sound at all. The murmur of the trucks downtown had either stopped or was too far away to be heard. The houses were blank and dark and still. If they had been empty there would have been a vast desolation in the night. But they were occupied by motionless staring figures, which made an even greater desolation. The streets were utterly dark and there were motionless, stone-hard human figures toppled here and there upon them. And there was the fact that around them furtive figures were in motion in the dark city. And now another element to the over-all horror—a cordon of troops had been flung about the city, and it was alerted to shoot anyone fleeing this city of the dead.

Lucy's teeth chattered suddenly. But Waldron kept on, methodically examining cars. The badly shattered ones, of course, were mostly so crumpled that to open their doors quietly was impossible. But at last he found a convertible with its top down. He stepped over the door and tried its glove compartment. It made a slight noise as it opened. He whispered: "A flashlight! That helps!"

A moment later he whispered again: "I can use the radio."

Then there was a long, long wait. Finally, the faintest, tiniest possible humming noise came, then music—turned down so that one could barely be sure it was there.

They waited. They had timed in between news broadcasts from New York. A tenor singing about love was about as inappropriate to Lucy's and Waldron's situation as any sound could be. But presently a voice muttered: ... has not expanded. The method of contagion has so far baffled all epidemologists. Even electron microscopes give no clue to the microorganism involved, and culture-plates exposed all about the plague areas have provided no unknown forms of bacteria or viruses. The existence of still-active material for the spread of the plague, however, was proved today. A group of newspapermen, who had been isolated because they secured an interview with the plague-spreader, Waldron, volunteered today to make a crucial experiment. Several members of the group considered that they might have been somehow immune to the cause of the plague, in that they had talked to Waldron without becoming infected. As single individuals, approaching from different directions, they moved toward the city.

One of them, Nick Bannerman of the Messenger, interpreted some of Waldron's statements as indications that the virulence of the plague thinned out at the edges of the plague spots. From Waldron's statements, he believed that he would be able to detect the presence of whatever conditions make the plague virulent before he actually became a victim. He equipped himself with a walkie-talkie and moved toward the city along the Pulaski Skyway. He would return, he said, if he felt any symptoms. Epidemologists were not hopeful, but considered that if he felt slight symptoms and withdrew, he might develop immunity if he did not become a victim. In such a case serum from his blood might immunize other persons and in time permit of the immunization of the entire population. At four this afternoon he started toward the plague spot. He kept in touch by walkie-talkie. He was in the act of saying that he felt no symptoms whatever when his voice cut off in the middle of a word. Nothing has been heard from him since....

The voice murmured on. Waldron tensed. Presently the newscast came to an end. He turned it off. Then the silence was so deep that the blood in his own ears seemed to make a pulsing sound. There was no light anywhere except to the east, where a pale glare shone up toward the sky. That was the glow of New York's myriad street lights. The nearer lights of Jersey City were hidden by houses.

"Walkie-talkie," whispered Waldron. "That's it! If I could get hold of one..."

He stood still, thinking intensively. There was silence....

Something crashed no more than two blocks away. It was a sound like tinware falling. Lucy groped blindly for his hand.

"All right," he whispered.

He led her away—half a block, a block. He froze, clutching her arm tightly. A little knot of men, about half a dozen, came out of an alleyway. They crossed the street and vanished.

"Close, that. But I ought to have my armor on underneath my clothes. Then I could simply stand still. The two of us wouldn't look like anybody who'd have been stealing trucks and killing big shots. Listen!"

He whispered desperate instructions of what she was to do if he went stone-hard and rigid. He had made extra high-frequency packs. He still had two of them. He turned one on and—while Lucy stared and listened desperately for other living beings-he got the armor off, piece by piece, and back on again with his ordinary clothing outside of it. Then he said grimly: "We ought to have another suit of this stuff for you. If I can catch one of those fellows alone, I'll try." Then he said: "Damn! I've shot this pistol empty! We've got to find some weapons. A motorcycle cop or a traffic cop would have a gun—if we can find any."

"You said walkie-talkie—"

"Our next enterprise," he told her. "Hold everything!"

They had spoken in whispers. The last was barely breathed. Another patrol of the invaders had appeared. This one was not as near as the first. It went on, oblivious. Waldron and Lucy moved cautiously. There were two more alarms by the time they had traveled a mile.

"There must be a couple of thousand men in town here, looting it," whispered Waldron. "And half of them are hunting for us. They won't be sure whether they're looking for a traitor or a rebel, or whether somebody like Professor Hamlin. But he hasn't been mentioned in the newscasts yet. No time. They'll be guessing at a traitor."

They probably were. But the hunt for a traitor would not immediately extend to the examination of every normally clothed body of a man in the darkened streets of Newark. That would be too big a job. Yet the search going on must be a desperate one. Though conducted in pitch darkness, all lights and noise were forbidden lest the world beyond the dead city recover from its delusion that plague, and not planned crime, was responsible for its state of horror.

Over and over again, Waldron and Lucy avoided patrols of scale-armored men. It was noticeable that they never moved as solitary individuals. Individuals could lie in wait for a traitor to move; patrols could not. It could have been that individuals could not be trusted....

In any case, Waldron and Lucy evaded discovery. More, they crossed the river to Harrison undetected, though the feat was a hair-raising adventure. Here there were no trucks and the Pulaski Skyway curved into view as a vague and nebulous object in the night. There was no gray mist this far from the center of town. And here, too, a policeman lay sprawled out stiffly at a street intersection. Waldron took from him a revolver and a supply of cartridges.

Then he and Lucy climbed to the Skyway. Their upward motion was nerve-wracking, but they felt relatively safe. The invaders in their attempt at secrecy had kept their looting limited to the center of Newark. No movement must be visible beyond the dead area. Therefore, any place which could be seen in daylight from any place not yet dead must be left untouched.

Waldron and Lucy walked the Skyway. And it was a long journey. They were city folk, and already they had done more walking since sunset than most city people do in a month. Lucy, in particular, was desperately tired.

They walked a wide ribbon of concrete which rose above the dark meadows. Here and there were stalled automobiles, piles of wreckage. In the distance there were lights, but they were very far away indeed. Stars winked above them and on either side of the road stretched nothingness. The roadway climbed and climbed, and Lucy trudged on and on, until fatigue became an obsession. Presently they were very high up and a clean wind blew against them. There was only blackness below and behind, and it seemed that they walked hopelessly upon a highway across nothingness itself.

Twice, Waldron stopped at smashed motorcycles. Policemen leaned stiffly forward on them. Waldron burdened himself with their service revolvers and cartridges. He was heavily loaded now. Again they went on and the walk seemed endless. Lucy drew nearer and nearer to collapse.

She stumbled and he caught her, and later she stumbled again. Then she saw a bonfire burning very far away and roused a little. Waldron paused. He opened the door of a car that had run into the side-rail and stalled. Taking out the man at the wheel, he helped her into the car.

"Nick Bannerman started off this way," he said, "with a walkie-talkie. He'd be on foot. He'd be the only person on foot on the road ahead. I shan't go close enough to any fire or lantern to be shot at. You stay here."

She should have been alarmed. But she was so completely exhausted that his voice and all of reality seemed dreamlike. She mumbled and then she was asleep. It seemed seconds later that she felt him shaking her arm again. Desperately, she tried to rouse herself. Finally she did manage to get out of the car, but she would have fallen if he had not caught her. Then she heard him saying: "I found Nick. Here he is. We'll help you."

To Lucy it seemed what followed was part of a nightmare, of which she was only half-conscious.

Since sundown, she and Waldron had walked not less than fifteen miles on unyielding concrete.

Presently Lucy was dimly aware of being helped to lie down on something that was blissfully soft. Later she had a quite vivid memory of hearing Waldron say: "We ought to be safe now. You go on to sleep, Lucy. Nick and I have some talking to do."

And Lucy relaxed completely and she slept.

When she woke again, it was either just past dawn or close to sundown again. She heard voices. There was the amazingly fragrant odor of freshly made coffee and something else more tantalizing. She stirred. Waldron stood over her, his face drawn with weariness, but smiling.

"Rested?"

"Yes." Then she tried to move, and said, "Oh, Steve, I ache."

"You'll be all right when you've stirred around," he told her. "There's coffee and hot dogs—waiting and ready. Come and meet Nick Bannerman."

She stood up, painfully. They were inside a small garage, tools and cars under repair all about them. Waldron led her into the garage office, where the delicious smells came from. There was Nick Bannerman, short and swarthy, holding a frankfurter over a tin can from which the blue flame of alcohol arose. He grinned at her and nodded.

"Nice mess this, isn't it?" he asked cheerfully. "I got tired of being in jail and Steve'd said it wasn't a disease, so I figured I'd be as well off proving it as staying there while they decided whether to shoot me or not. I did think I'd feel some warning symptoms before I keeled over, but I didn't. I was walking along the highway, checking my pulse and sensations and reporting them all by walkie-talkie. And then all of a sudden it was pitch dark and Steve had this dinkus on me and was explaining a lot of improbable things. So we came here to hide. It was close to daybreak."

"And we've got those devils licked, now!" said Steve savagely. "We've got them!"

"We hope so, anyhow," said Nick, amiably. "My walkie-talkie's no good. Nobody happens to be listening. That's a sort of necessity for communication—that somebody be listening. So we've got a set-up we're fixing now. Have some coffee!"

From a steaming saucepan he poured coffee. Lucy took it and drank. Then she said ruefully: "I must look horrible. What are we going to do, Steve?"

"Nick went burglarizing, just at dawn. He came back with a couple of tape recorders. Unfortunately, they're the plug-in kind. We've been adjusting that—fixing them to work on car-radio power units. We just got them working half an hour ago. We've been making recordings for them."

Nick handed Lucy the cooked frankfurter, neatly folded in a slice of bread. She nodded gratefully and bit into it.

"The point is, of course," said Nick blandly, "that we didn't go all the way back to Newark. We stopped here. And the telephone here is a Jersey City number. You catch?"

Waldron said evenly: "There's no telephonic connection from Newark to New York, of course. Fran's gang has turned off the automatic exchanges. Maybe they've got somebody watching in them —in case! But the Jersey City exchanges are working! This part of the dead spot has direct phone connection to Jersey City!"

"Oh! You can phone—"

"Dumb little me," acknowledged Nick. "I'd have done it! But Steve is a suspicious guy. He said that when he telephoned that frozen mice could be found up near Columbia University, it wasn't half an hour before that place was a plague spot. This guy Fran Dutt—whoever he may be—has friends in high places. They know as fast as any word comes in. They'd send people here—their people! Pretty good spy-system, I'd say. So we do not take down a telephone receiver and tell anybody where we are. We take down a receiver, yes. We dial a number, yes. Then we turn on the recorder to talk into that mouthpiece, and we get away from here like bats out of—" He stopped and beamed.

It seemed perfect. It seemed absolutely foolproof. And Waldron added icily: "And just to make absolutely sure, it's possible to dial a press line to Philadelphia. Nick's going to set one record going to give all this news to the Philadelphia office of the Consolidated Press Service. They'll get it and it'll be spread all over the United States before Fran's gang realizes it's happened. Spies in New York won't do a bit of good!"

It looked very neat indeed. As a precaution, they waited for sunset. There was a car in the garage, brought in for a wax-and-polish job. They made sure it was ready for a get-away and they checked their weapons.

Meanwhile, they drank coffee and ate hot dogs cooked over an alcohol flame—the coffee and provisions had come from a delicatessen shop raided by Nick during his burglarizing sortie—and rejoiced. All that was necessary was for them to pick up the telephone receiver....

Night fell. They waited for darkness to become complete.

They heard a noise. And on the instant the three of them turned pale. It was the sound of many feet, marching out of cadence. The three of them became deathly silent. Waldron drew his revolver and Nick pulled out his. They waited.

The noise came nearer. It did not hasten and it did not hesitate. It reached the street in front of the small garage and then it went on past. A party of forty or fifty men. Even in the blackness they could be seen wearing the scaly armor of the unknown invaders. They went on past the building and marched away into the darkness.

A long time later, Nick Bannerman said shakily: "Now, what in blazes are they doing over here?"

It was obvious enough, in the light of later events. But the trio was much too shaken to think of the logical reason for massing parties of armor-clad men near the fringes of the dead area which was Newark. Waldron's mind had been desperately occupied with immediate dangers and the frantic necessity of finding what the "plague" was and how to counter it. After that he had tried to get his knowledge to where it could be used. He had not even tried to anticipate developments that could be expected to come next.

Yet it would be inconceivable that invaders—looters, aliens, from another world—would intend merely to take and loot one city and then return to their own world. They would have either to withdraw their incredible device which froze all life or they would have to keep it in operation. If they withdrew it, the looting would be discovered and the fact that some instrument, some weapon, had been used would be inferred. If they kept it on, ultimately someone would be able to detect its manner of operation.

Having taken one city, the invaders could not withdraw. They had to go on. An extension of frozen territory would require a force ready to move in, turn off power-lines, cut off all communications, and be ready in case planes flying overhead dived and crashed and caught fire.

But the party of armored men went on and on, and the soft, slip-slop sound of their muffled feet died away.

Waldron said: "We don't use this telephone. They might be tipped off too quickly. We move back. In fact, we carry our outfits, Nick. If there is a rush toward them, we'll start running from here."

Nick swallowed audibly. There had been over forty men in the party marching past the garage.

"Why—yes!" he said sickishly. Then he ground his teeth. "Damn them! They made me scared! They scared me! And I don't like the idea of being scared! I've got to do something about this, Steve!"

They listened for a very long time. And the actual silence added to the quality of terror hovering over them.

Half an hour later, the three of them moved away from the garage where Lucy had slept and where Nick and Waldron had arranged for recorders to speak into telephones. They were heavily loaded down with their apparatus.

They moved with extreme caution through the darkness and stillness. It was another half-hour before they entered a small corner drugstore. With shielded flashlights, they set up one recorder to start its message. They left it. A block away, they set up another in a butcher shop.

"Here goes," said Waldron curtly.

He lifted the telephone receiver. He listened. There was a dial tone. He carefully dialed the number Nick gave him. He heard a bored voice say: "Consolidated Press. Go ahead!"

"Get this recorded if you can," said Waldron. "It's a recording from Nick Bannerman and Steven Waldron. It's coming from inside the military cordon around Newark. Get every word of it. It will repeat twice!"

Nick threw the switch. The recorder began to speak in the silent store.

"Nick Bannerman of the Messenger speaking. I am inside the supposed plague spot which includes Newark. I have been hit by the plague and have recovered. I tell you from the beginning that—"

Then they were out of the butcher shop. Waldron paused to close the door firmly, so that the sound of the recording could not be heard from the street. They ran through soft, black, deadly stillness. They arrived at the drugstore where the other recorder was set to speak. Nick dropped a coin in the slot. He listened. He heard the dial tone. He dialed the number of the Messenger's rewrite line. A familiar voice said: "Messenger, rewrite. Who is it?"

"It's me," snapped Nick. "Nick Bannerman. Get the stuff that's coming. I'm telling you. I'll repeat it once. Listen!" The recorder began: "Nick Bann—"

Then Nick hung up the phone, rather absurdly. He said through stiff lips: "No good, Steve. Somebody cut me off. And the dial tone didn't come back on. Somehow, those devils are monitoring the phone lines from this area. Let's beat it!"

They went swiftly out into the street. Waldron seized Lucy's hand and dragged her after him. They ran. And about them was the terribly deadly silence which cracked one's eardrums. It was broken only by their own footsteps, which sounded thunderous.

Then the silence, which was horrible, was replaced by a sound which was even more horrible. It was the purring of motors. Cars were racing through the blackness: muffled cars, unlighted cars. It should not be possible for anybody to drive so furiously in absolute darkness. Then Waldron made a guess.

"Snooperscopes!" he panted to Nick. "I wondered how the trucks could do without lights! They've got snooperscopes!"

Nick ran on for just three paces. Then he stopped and lay down on the sidewalk. He put out one leg in an ungainly attitude, as if he had fallen while walking. Waldron dragged Lucy to one side.

"Still!" he panted. "Act frozen!"

A snooperscope, of course, was a device that was invented for snipers in warfare. It transformed infrared light —heat-rays—into visible light on a screen. A man could drive a truck through absolute blackness by the difference in temperature of streets and building walls, which would appear on the screen as different degrees of brightness.

A car turned a corner a block ahead. It was crowded with men. It raced past them, dropped out four men a bare hundred yards beyond them, swerved and raced down a side Street to leave other men at other intersections.

Waldron found himself sweating profusely. Even after he had heard the car go past and even after it had turned the corner, he sweated in the ghastly realization that purest chance had saved them. Because they, being alive and active, would have showed as warmer, brighter and more visible on the infra-red instrument screen.

Other cars moved swiftly at other places. Unlighted cars. Furiously driven cars. The purring of their motors divided and spread. They were forming a cordon about the place from which telephones had been dialed. It was the purpose of the drivers to establish a cordon of armored men about that place where desolation had somehow become contaminated with life. They had to destroy that life, because it tried to destroy them by telling their deepest secret.

The noise of motors dwindled and stopped. The cars were still. There was a cordon. Had the driver of the car that passed within twenty feet of them been driving less frantically, he would have noticed the brighter prone figures on the sidewalk. The snooperscope, in fact, would have showed them as warm-blooded and alive, just as the "third eye"—the heat-perceptive organ—of pit-vipers detects the bodies of small warm-blooded animals in the darkness of empty woodlands.

The four men dumped out a hundred yards away now began to progress very slowly and carefully away from the three who played dead. They stopped and touched every prone figure on the sidewalks. They reached into every stalled or wrecked car. Once Waldron saw a faint flicker of light as one of them guardedly used a blue-glow flashlight up an alley. Of course, they would not all be equipped with infra-red devices. But they had been warned that the person —the incredibly alive and active person, perhaps the traitor among them—might be disguised as a victim. So they touched every tumbled body to see if it was other than iron-hard.

They went away into the distance. A long time later, Waldron stood up stiffly. By the mere chance that the cordon had been formed ever so slightly beyond them, the trio had gone undetected.

Twenty minutes later they were in the garage where they had labored so futilely to contrive the recorders which would tell what the outside world had to know.

There was no reason for them to choose the garage. But they felt that they had to get off the street. This place they knew. The clinging smell of coffee about the office was singularly comforting.

Then Lucy began to shiver. Waldron said desperately: "We've got to do something, Nick! We've got to! But—"

There was a sound of footsteps outside. One man's footsteps. The man walked heavily down the sidewalk outside, and the three in the inner darkness could not imagine who it could be. The man opened the door of the garage office. He came inside. He closed the door behind him.

Then Fran Dutt said in a low, harsh voice: "Lucy? Steve?"

There was no answer. The three of them were motionless.

"Answer me!" whispered Fran fiercely. "I know you're here! I traced you with a short-wave detector. The Leaders haven't thought of that yet. I was in the party that walked past here just now. I was with them and my instrument picked up your set noise. It tells me you're here now. I knew you'd come here when all the world tried to find you to kill you. I didn't tell the others when we walked past just now. I'm your friend, Steve! Lucy—I've got to talk to you!"

Dead silence. Then Waldron's voice, cold and deadly: "I've got a gun on your middle, Fran. Come through the door and talk. But talk quietly!"

Fran came out into the garage proper. He closed the door from the office behind him. Then he turned a flashlight on his own face. It was haggard and worn.

"I've been going crazy," he said bitterly. "Lucy, you're all right?"

He swept the beam around. It touched Lucy and its reflection showed Nick as well as Waldron. "Three of you, eh? You are clever!"

He put the flashlight down on the ground, with its beam still turned on.

"They got an alarm from somewhere," he said jerkily. "They're hunting there. But I came here and my instrument said you were back, whatever you did elsewhere. It's worse than I had imagined, Steve. They're not only looting the city, but they're shipping women back to my homeland for the Leaders. It is horrible! Horrible! If Lucy is caught I will go mad! She must be made more safe."

Waldron sat down. Fran Dutt wrung his hands, in the singular surroundings of the garage lighted only by his flashlight beam. He looked like a man in torment. Waldron pocketed his revolver.

"Well?" he said cynically. "How can Lucy be made more safe? God knows I've tried!"

Fran made a lightning-like movement "This way!"

A flash and an inadequate report came from something in his hand. A blue spark shot out from Nick's high-frequency pack. The tiny, silenced gun spat again. A wire of Waldron's pack parted and a lurid flame spat momentarily.

Then Lucy cried out. Nick toppled slowly forward, every muscle instantaneously stiffened in that ghastly tetany which men had called the "plague." He struck the floor of the garage and careened to one side, unspeakably grotesque because he retained the pose in which he had been standing. And Waldron, seated on a full oil drum next to a car in process of repair, remained utterly motionless. Not a muscle moved. Not an eyelash fluttered.

Lucy cried out hoarsely when she saw Waldron stiff and still. She wrung her hands.

"I almost wish," said Fran Dutt, in exquisite bitterness, "I almost wish that he had killed me when I came in. Because I happen to love you."