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.
They saw the bonfire in the night. Nick turned on his car's headlights. He swept confidently toward the fire. There were soldiers around it and he saw a machine gun pointing toward Newark.
But nobody moved. There was a sudden clashing, clanging uproar everywhere toward New York. The uproar grew greater. It reached a climax. Then it stopped. Afterward, only here and there other crashings sounded. Then they stopped too.
They reached the soldiers, who were now motionless, lying on the ground in grotesque postures.
The rest of the United States would immediately be assured that the plague which had wiped out Newark—and had appeared again in two spots in New York and one in Westchester County—had spread. Jersey City was now a place of frozen, motionless forms and wreckage.
"Head on toward the tunnel," said Waldron grimly. "It isn't likely that Fran's gang has gotten to that yet. If they have, we'll try to shoot our way through. Hold it!"
He got out of the car. The street lights here had not yet been turned off. It seemed very remarkable to be walking openly in a lighted place. But Waldron accumulated weapons and ammunition, including sub-machine guns. The three of them were very well armed when they went on down the ramp into the long tunnel which led to the vehicular tube itself.
Fran's gang had not gotten to the tunnel mouth.
Nick drove into it. The lights burned brightly, but the traffic was wrong. Utterly wrong. The traffic was stopped. And every car that stopped did so because it crashed into something, or stalled when it pushed gently against the immovable. There was one place where Nick and Waldron had to get out and use the jack from a truck to raise up a car so that they could topple it over. That way there was barely space for their own car to scrape by.
One of the tunnel police lay on the catwalk beside the highway, one hand stretching stiffly out to where a moving car would have hit it. But theirs was the only moving car.
Then, abruptly, the lights in the Tube went out. The rows of glittering electric bulbs which brighten its white-tiled walls died abruptly. Their car's headlights glared ahead. Suddenly they showed only emptiness. Apparently the Invaders' weapon had ceased to have effect, here, and the cars beyond its reach in the tunnel had fled on ahead and out. But then they saw a limousine, stopped for no perceptible reason. Bluish, dense smoke came from under its hood. The smell was from burning rubber.
Then they came out into New York, with all its lights glowing brightly and stars shining down from the light-tinted sky. But New York was silent. It was still.
It was dead, with people tumbled stiffly in its streets, and all its vehicles piled in wrecks and heaps and dented masses.
NINE
Waldron had had some hope of New York. He even stopped the car and listened, quite foolishly. The subway did not roar. Traffic did not move. There was such silence on Manhattan Island as was never there by day or night, in summer or in wintertime, since the glaciers drew back and permitted the growth of arctic grasses.
"We're too late," he said with a peculiar calmness. "Much too late. I'd guess this happened all of five minutes ago. Probably while we were in the tunnel. By the time we could get high-frequency packs made and any number of men up and convinced and armed, the invaders would find us. In empty streets like these we'd be plainly visible. You notice there aren't as many cars about as there were in Newark."
The last comment was for Lucy. It was noticeable, when one looked. But for three days, now, New Yorkers had been getting out of town by any possible means. There were only a fraction as many automobiles as normal. There were fewer people. A vast army of refugees had flowed northward and spread out. The number of cars and people visible at a little before midnight, when the invasion-weapon struck, was only fractionally as great as it should have been.
Nick chewed at his fingers.
"It looks like we're licked," he said dismally. "Damn ft, Steve, they'll get us sooner or later. Let's hunt up these guys and use up this ammunition we've got."
"I'd like to do more damage than that," said Waldron. "If they took New York, they'd take Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx, I suppose. I wonder how they spread this stuff, anyhow? It must be something done electrically. It's like magnetization. A DC current turns an object from the stasis-condition into reality in that world and unreality in this. A high-frequency current undoes it. I wonder..."
It was not particularly rational to sit in a stopped car in a dead city and speculate about how it had been immobilized. Especially when a considerable force of armored men, responsible for the disaster, would be arriving at any instant.
"I've got a hunch," said Waldron thoughtfully. "The hunch is that they spread the—I suppose it's some sort of a crazy field of force—they might be able to spread it by wires. If they introduced it into a city's lighting circuits, the wires would carry it everywhere. Like captive radio—short-range stuff for colleges and small towns, transmitted over wires, that can be picked up within half a mile."
Lucy said desperately: "Steve, please don't give up! Think of all the people who've been taken there to that other world—"
"I'm not giving up," said Waldron calmly. "I've just reached the point where I can't feel angry any longer. I'm past all that. I'm thinking that they might use the city electric mains as a way to establish the condition that turns everybody into statues. And I'm thinking that just possibly we could use them to nullify it." He turned his head to Nick. "There's a huge electric power plant over on the other side of the East River, Nick. This thing isn't half an hour old, and they'll have automatic stokers and controls. We ought to be able to use a hundred thousand horsepower or so...."
The starter hummed and the motor purred, and the car moved swiftly forward. Nick headed east. The uncanniness of the frozen city did not lessen as they passed through more and more scenes disclosing the abruptness and totality of the disaster. They did see more people away from the tunnel's mouth, though. An amazing array of shabby human beings lay upon the sidewalks.
These had been people who could not secure transportation out of the city. There were scrubwomen and men who looked like janitors, and once there was a too richly dressed woman. There were bearded men—three of them—fallen beside their pushcarts. They came to one place where a woman in a gray checked apron, magnificently matronly, lay in the middle of a group of bundled-up children that she had been leading to some unknown destination.
They drove down Canal Street, sweeping past the Bowery and up upon the bridge. Then they were high over the wide East River.
Below them, on the dark water, midget tugs with shining bright lights puffed sturdily but aimlessly upon the waters. Their crews smitten, they would move at random about the harbor until their fires died down or they ran aground. Far over to the left, the multiple chimneys and the pale brick bulk of the giant powerhouse showed in the faint glow of all the city's lights. Some smoke came from the tall stacks.
"There'll still be steam," said Waldron, "but they'll want to shut off the power as soon as they can. It would be logical. Since high-frequency wakes people up, any sort of accident that would create an arc might upset their plans. When we go in the powerhouse, Nick, we'll want to take all our guns."