The Other Side of Here
- Автор: Лейнстер Мюррей
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Other Side of Here». Краткое содержание книги:
Newark ... Manhattan ... Baltimore—one by one they went out. A succession of thriving communities suddenly put out like a guttered flame—men, women, children sprawled like grotesque mannikins.
Steve Waldron knew it couldn't be plague. There had to be some connection with the disappearance of the nation's top scientists. And then he plunged to the very center of a dead city and gaped at a truth he could not believe. What could he do against so fearsome a force that threatened to engulf the whole nation?
Here's a spine-tingling science-fiction novel by an old master. It will open up a new dimension of suspense and excitement.
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.
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.