Chapter VI: Scientist at Bay

Heavily, laboriously, clumsily, the tanks crawled on through the darkness. They were blind and they were fumbling. They went clanking through a blackness as of the Abyss, with the peculiar confidence of things that have long been sightless, while rain beat upon them and thunder roared about them.

Hines and the tank-officer were again bent over the map.

"Schaaf's experiment-station was here," said Hines shortly, touching a spot on the engraved sheet. "It was more or less a secret, but he was trying to work out how to make these same darkness-producing waves. He was trying, in fact, to duplicate Preston's results in hopes of finding some way to neutralize them. That accounts for his short-wave set and the experimental license that enabled him to use it."

The tank-officer received a cross-bearing from the tanks they had left behind at the wrecked bridge, and drew a line on his map.

"This is the third darkness-transmitter Preston's brought into use," he said quietly.

"And he's using underground a rials," said Hines shortly, "because anything above ground would have been blown away by the Storm. We can't locate the transmitters closer than within a quarter of a mile, by cross-bearings, and we can't count on destroying them even with explosives unless we locate them more closely than that. Poison-gas will be useless in the wind that will be blowing by dawn."

"We're licked, then," said the tank-officer.

"Not yet," said Hines grimly. "We've got the bearings now. Let's go on. I've still got one hope. Schaaf's a smart man."

The tanks crawled on blindly, like gigantic eyeless slugs creeping along the bottom of the ocean's deepest deep, while within a vast irregular circle fifty miles across, the drenched, shivering, hysterical survivors of the Storm itself went closer to madness from the terror of the dark.

* * * * *

At one o'clock in the morning, while all over the United States people sat up by their radios and listened fascinatedly to the never-ceasing broadcasts of news and orders, reports and fragmentary pleas for help, there was the first direct word from the man who had caused the Storm That Had to be Stopped.

Radio broadcasting was, of course, the next most important factor, after Hines's activities in lessening the damage Preston did to the earth.

All the first night of the storm a warning was broadcast to the isolated folk who hastily turned to the radio as their sole link with the outside, that the wind was to be expected to begin again at daybreak. By broadcasting the location of the few hamlets protected by fortuitously placed mountains, much good was done.

Mostly, though, the radio served to make all the world realize the extent of the catastrophe. It is to the credit of the people of America that trains loaded down with supplies for the devastated area were already on their way while the Storm still raged on its second day.

The radio enabled all the continent to share in the horror of the Storm, and also the radio was the means of communication with Hines and the blinded tanks in the storm-center, so that a hundred million people shared in his adventure, in his attempt to stop the Storm.

Perhaps the most spectacular feat the radio performed that night was an accident. It was at one o'clock. The tank-officer in charge of Hines's tank was communicating with headquarters. The Red Cross had arranged for half a dozen sentences from him, describing the devastation the tank had passed through on its way to the mountains. If rehabilitation was to take place, vast sums would be needed, and money could best be got while the catastrophe was fresh in peoples' minds.

The tank-officer spoke curtly into the microphone to headquarters. His words were amplified and rebroadcast and sent over the nation-wide chains of radio stations. A hundred million people heard his voice and even the noise of the machinery of the tank, crawling through the darkness where the Storm was made.

But he had spoken no more than a dozen words when another voice cut in. This other voice was harsh, metallic; an abominally cocksure and arbitrary voice. It spoke with a studied insolence.

* * * * *

"This is Preston speaking," said the voice arrogantly, and instantly folk all over the United States stiffened in their chairs as the unexpected tones came from their loudspreakers.

"I have been much amused by the accounts of the efforts made to find and kill me. I have been listening in, of course, from my entirely secure retreat in the storm-center, and I am speaking on the same wave-length the tanks have been using. I hear my own voice in another speaker, being rebroadcast as the lieutenant's voice was supposed to be. I think it about time that the people of the United States should know with whom and what they deal."

Preston's voice stopped, and millions of people waited breathlessly. Static interrupted his words, and whole phrases were sometimes obliterated by the crashings made by the lightning, but on the whole his message was clear.

"I have made this storm for my own private purposes. I can continue it for days, for weeks, even for months. In one week, I am informed, I will have so deranged the normal atmospheric conditions in the United States that the crops of this fall will be practically ruined.

"In two weeks, by drawing down the colder air from the Arctic Circle, I will have brought on winter in Canada. In three weeks there will be four feet of snow in London, Germany will be frozen in, and all the north of France will have a semi-arctic climate, while the United States will face a famine. I invite the meterological experts of the world to verify my statement.

"I shall continue the storm I have created until the governments I have mentioned make it worth my while to stop it. In the meantime, I assure you that the tanks that are trying to locate me have no chance of success. The Storm will continue until I wish it to stop. I will stop it only when I am sufficiently paid for my trouble."

The arrogant voice ceased. Announcers' voices, quivering with excitement, followed with a statement that radio compasses had picked up the message before its cessation and that it had actually come from the Catskills, from the storm-center.

The United States began to be afraid. The Boards of Governors of the Stock Exchanges of New York and Chicago began to arrange, quietly, for the closing of those exchanges. Cables began to carry long messages in diplomatic code across the ocean-beds.

Suddenly another broadcast, as widely distributed as the first, came from Schaaf, in his tiny laboratory set in a hillside. He had a national reputation, now, as an associate of Hines, and he was frantically called upon for a statement to nullify the panic that Preston's announcement would cause.

Schaaf's speech, repeated in the same ten million receiving sets, was entirely characteristic of him.

"I haff heard Breston's speech," he said dryly. "I remark that my friendt Hines is on the way to join me in a little _Schrecklichkeit_ party, to be bractised on Breston. I consider that as imbortant as anything Breston has said. We will haff him in a matter of hours. As for his threats to mess up der weather of two continents, I say one thing: No matter how thin you slice it, it is still boloney."

* * * * *

Schaaf's speech had just the tone necessary to restore confidence without lessening the public's sense of the real urgency of the situation. There were speculators in food-stuffs and other necessities, of course, who immediately grasped the opportunity Preston's threats created. They, by the way, suffered considerable losses by their enterprise as things turned out.

But on the whole the public reacted in highly favorable fashion to Schaaf's dry reassurance. Americans will always pay more for a good joke than a pathetic story, and Schaaf raised more money by the last line of his speech than all the tear-jerking efforts of radio spellbinders during the rest of the night.

Schaaf did not listen in and hear himself eulogized on the ether-waves, the details of his scientific career sandwiched in between casualty lists and weather predictions. He was placidly unaware of his sudden celebrity.

In fact, until the restored mail-services brought him sacks of admiring and begging letters, and an astounding number of proposals of marriage from female admirers, he was not aware that he had done anything out of the ordinary.

He was busy. He turned from the microphone with a grunt of disgusted relief. His experiment-station was a tiny stone-walled building half sunk in a mountainside. It consisted of four rooms.

The laboratory alone was of use to him now. Experimenting as he had been with short radio waves, he had needed a workshop in which the only etheric disturbances would be those he made himself. The walls of the workshop were lined with copper sheeting and the windows covered with heavy copper gauze, all of which was grounded. The interior was insulated from all Hertzian waves from without.

Now that laboratory glowed brightly with electric light, though he had, only to open a door to see the apparently solid mass of no longer transparent air which resulted from Preston's devices.

He took down a screen from a window. Instantly the blackness seemed to pour, to stab, into the brightly lighted laboratory. Through the opening in the grounded shielding, Preston's short-waves penetrated, depriving the air of its ability to permit light to pass through it. A long cone of darkness, so definite as to seem a solid substance, projected into the room--more powerful than the shielding because of the nearness to Preston's headquarters.

Schaaf grumbled and measured it, carefully making his measurements from accurately marked points. He wrote down his figures and replaced the screen. The seemingly tangible cone vanished with much the effect of magic.

Schaaf sat down at a little table and began to calculate absorbedly. He scowled as he worked, and mumbled irritatedly as he took down a book of logarithms and ran his fingers down its columns.

* * * * *

The table trembled, from time to time, with the violence of the thunder without. There was a very slow leak in the roof over in one corner, and now and again a drop fell glittering to an enlarging puddle on the floor. The wind howled outside. The rain drummed on the roof.

Schaaf finished his calculations, leaned back and absently combed out his luxuriant yellow whiskers with his fingers, then filled and lighted his pipe. Its poisonously strong odor filled the air.

The thunder was deafening and nearly continuous. The shrieking of the wind was daunting. The drumming sound of the rain was unspeakably depressing. Schaaf smoked comfortably for a space, and picked up the remnant of a half-eaten sandwich. He bit into it, stopped, and listened keenly.

There was a thin and dismal hooting above even the tumult from the skies. Schaaf beamed, and then growled impatiently, He swathed himself in oil-skins, muttering something about "Der _verdammt_ Breston!" and took a huge reel of cord from the wall. It looked like the extra-strong braided cord that is used for scientific kite-flying--or for getting a kite aloft that is to carry up a temporary a rial. He fastened the end inside the door, knotting and double-knotting it. He went out, unreeling the cord behind him, and fought the door shut again.

There was no longer any movement or any activity in the laboratory. A loud-speaker made nasal noises in one corner, which the booming of thunder and of wind and rain drowned out to inarticulateness. The lights burned steadily.

An open fire alternately leaped madly upward and died down to nothing beneath an improvised damper closing off most of the chimmey-space above it. Rain made rattling noises on the windows, and wind screamed overhead, and always, always, always, the thunder boomed and crashed.

Then the door burst open and Schaaf came in again, fumbling his way back along the cord. He was soaked. Behind him, guiding themselves by the cord, came three other people. Hines was one of them, tattered and ragged and with a great gash on his forehead. He carried Kathryn lightly, in spite of the storm. She was wrapped in an oil-skin, one arm in improvised splints.

Hines set her down carefully and blinked with the air of a man whose sight has suddenly been restored. The third person was the officer in command of the leading tank.

Schaaf put his whole weight against the door and closed it.

"It was not bad work," he observed comfortably. "You stopped on der concrete road where der big tree had blown down, as I told you by radio. I came down, blundered into you, and banged on der door. Here we are. Now, where is der map?"

The tank-officer produced a sheet he had carried under his slicker. Schaaf began to unroll it.

"I haff sworn--_Gott!_ How I haff sworn!--because I didt not haff a map of der locality. Miss Bush, go ofer by der fire and get warm. Now, Hines, show me my bresent location and tell me der scale of der map."

The tank-officer, instead, obeyed both orders. Hines was settling Kathryn comfortably by the fire. And Schaaf took dividers and a pencil and calculated feverishly, grumbling in guttural German at the absurdity of calculating distances in feet and inches instead of meters. Eventually he measured with painstaking accuracy, drew six lines from the location of his laboratory to very precise and exact lengths, and put large dots at their ends.

"There," he said decisively. "That is der best I can do. I have watched der _verdammt_ darkness. Look!" He pulled out a window-screen and a black cone of opacity stabbed across the brightly lighted room. He replaced the screen and it vanished. "Der wafes that destroy der transparency of der air," he said briskly, "can come in der window-opening when I remofe part of der copper insulation inside. They interfere with each other, dissipate, and generally lose der original effectifness. Which gifes me my information. By der shape of der cone of blackness, I haff calculated der direction and distance of six different points from which Breston has transmitted darkness. At these six spots he has sending-stations."

The tank-officer said warmly:

"Splendid, sir! We took bearings as we came along--see my pencil-lines, Sir?--and they intersect your lines at just the spots you indicate! It looks as if you are correct."

"Of course I'm correct! And if I had had der intelligence of an angle-worm I would haff made der same measurements of der wafes that made der storm and we would know where Breston is. He is not at all of those places, certainly."

"No," said Hines. "But what I'm hoping for, Schaaf, is some way to see in spite of the darkness. Once--"

"_Gott in Himmel!_" cried Schaaf angrily. "Haff I not kicked myself forty-sefen times? Before, when we fought Breston in New York, his wafes made der air opaque to fisible light, but not to ultra-fiolet, and we did tricks with that to find our way about. But now, he has juggled his wafe-lengths to make der air absorb der ultra-fiolet rays also. I am as blind as a bat at der bottom of der sea, Hines, and I am mad! I am mad as der deffil, Hires!"

Hines frowned at the map.

"He'll keep the darkness on, even after daybreak," he said coldly. "He'll shoot the storm-producing waves out as an addition. And since he turns off his sending-stations when a tank draws near--"

"Maybe he has microphones in der ground," said Schaaf gloomily. "Der sound of a tank is unmistakable. Or maybe he switches them on and off for der mere purpose of being confusing. In any efent I haff done all I can. I tell you abbroximately where his sending-stations are. But you cannot find them without seeing them or tracing der wafes home, and he turns them off when a tank comes near. It is like trying to catch a mouse that is in six holes at once."

Hines smiled faintly.

"But we have lots of cats," he observed, "Lieutenant, I want these orders given."

Schaaf listened critically, then appreciatively, and then he beamed as Himnes's voice went on.

"Hines," he said comfortably, "if your brains were dynamite and they went off, der report would be like Vesuvius. We got der son-of-a-gun!"

Even the tank-officer grinned confidently as he prepared to make his way back to the tank by the guiding cord.