Sir Mallory’s Magnitude

1

After Armageddon

There was a lusty scream from the visitors’ gallery. The lights of the hall flickered for a moment; guards drew and fired at shadows on the wall or at each other. Panic threatened; the restless roar of a great crowd rose to a jabbering sound like monkey-talk. In the great gallery and on the vast floor a few dimwits began to dash for exits.

“Rot them,” growled Senator Beekman. He shoved the mike at Ballister. “Shut them up,” he snapped. “Use your precious psychology!”

Young Ballister took the mike, snapped on the button, dialed for heaviest amplification. “Atten-shun!” he barked into it, with the genuine parade-ground note of command.

The monkey-talk stopped for a priceless moment. Ballister jumped into it with both feet. Soothingly he said: “Now, folks, what’s your hurry? Stick aroundthese learned gentlemen put on a pretty good show for your benefit.”

The learned gentlemen who were dashing for exits purpled; the visitors in the gallery laughed loud and long at the feeble little joke. They resumed their seats.

“Take it, Senator,” snapped Ballister in an undertone. “I’ll scamper for a gander at the fuss up there.” He hopped nimbly from the platform into an elevator, which shot him up to the gallery. Displaying his Representative’s badge, he broke through the cordon of International Police that was zealously guarding an ordinary seat, like any other of the five thousand in sight.

“What was it?” he demanded of a French provost. “Killing?”

The provost shrugged. “We do not know vat, m’sieu. On-lee we know that in that seat sat M’sieu the mayor of Bruxelles.”

“Hi,” snapped a crisp young voice at Ballister.

He removed his horn-rims to regard the young lady disapprovingly. “Beat it, Kay,” he ordered. “This isn’t for the papers. Another unpleasant international incident. The Mayor of Brussels.”

The young man looked down at the stage, very small and far away. From the speakers in the walls came the voice of Senator Beekman, hoarse and embarrassed:

“Our agenda will be incomplete today, gentlemen and ladies. I have been advised of thethe non-attendance of Monsieur Durtal, Mayor of Brussels and major sponsor of the bill entitled: ‘An Act to Prevent Competitive Development of Instruments of Warfare.’ We will proceed to”

The Anti-War Conference had been in full swing for two months. There was nothing slow or inefficient about the great congress of all the nations; the tremendous task before them took time, lots of it. The Grand Agenda of the Conference covered a space of three years, and all busy ones.

Banister knew something about the Second World War; he had spent a couple of years in command of an infantry company at the tail-end of the mighty conflict. Then, when it was settled, and the sick-and-tired Axis armies and peoples had revolted and overthrown their warlords, he had naturally gone to the Conference as an American delegate. Training as specialized as hispsychological jurisprudencewas in demand.

He thought he had seen everything, world-weary at twenty-three, but the Conference offered a few new kicks. There was something ludicrous about a Japanese delegate trying to wangle a few more square miles of Korea for his nation. Ballister was usually the trouble-shooter who explained to the simple people how their demands would encroach on so-and-so’s rights, which would lead to such-and-such a consequence, which would be bad for the world in general for this-and-that reasons.

It was a plan magnificent in scope. The vast Auditorium of Oslo was jammed with the delegates and specialists; the gallery was jammed day and night with visitorsanybody who wanted to see. There was to be no diplomacy under the table in the world the Conference was making! Twenty years of war had shown the fallacy of secret treaties; the delegates desperately hoped that their three years of cooperative common sense would blast the old diplomatic nonsense from the face of the Earth.

Ballister had his troubles, not the least of these being Kay Marsh, of the New York Enquirer. Any other reporter he could handle; not Kay, for she had majored with him at Columbia in the same psych courses and knew him like a book. She knew then, in the gallery, that this wasn’t the time for comedy.

“Did you know him?” she asked.

“Met him twice,” said Ballister despondently, regarding the empty chair. “A real humanitarian, man of the people. Not one of these professionals. And he’s the third to go.”

“Pelterie from Switzerland, Vanderhoek from South Africa, now Durtal of Belgium,” she listed somberly. “Who’s doing it?”

“If I knew I’d tell you,” said Ballister. “Hell! Let us be gay! Have you got the handouts for the day’s work?”

“I filed my copy already,” she said. “Macklin’s covering this business. He’s going to do a series of articles on it. You’re off?”

“Through for the week. Let’s flit.”

“Sounds like an insect,” she complained. “But if you wish.”

They elbowed their way through the crowd, out of the Auditorium. Oslo was en flite, with its face washed and its hair brushed for the distinguished visitors. Its population had swelled by a half-million since it was chosen as the Conference site. Festively decked helicopters and ‘gyros dragged advertising signs through the sky in all languages. One battered little blimp towed the notice in French: “Attend the Produce Show! April 11!”

Kay pointed at it with a smile. “Did I ever tell you I was a farmer’s daughter?” she remarked.

Ballister recognized the lead. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you. But I guarantee you’ll be bored silly; they probably won’t even speak the international language.”

“Cows and hay don’t have to speak any language,” she sparkled happily. “I haven’t seen a decent steer since Nebraska.”

They got wind of the Produce Show and followed the smell to a neat collection of tents, where Kay delightedly inspected timothy and cheeses and champion milkers for two hours while Ballister tried to hold his breath for that length of time.

“Hold it,” he snapped as she was going into a gush at a draft-horse who stared sullenly at her hat. “Gent’s fainted.”

They elbowed their way through the crowd, to find that the gentleman was nearly foaming at the mouth, twitching convulsively on the ground. The only serious attention being paid him was by a barker from a nearby tent, who loudly offered three to one that the gentleman would die in less than half an hour.

“Throat constricted or something,” said Kay after a swift examination. “Looks like a super-violent allergy.”

Ballister went through his pockets, found a box of amyl nitrite pearls. He broke one under the man’s nose, drawing it away as he came to.

“You, there,” he snapped, waving up a couple of husky farmers. “Carry him away from this damned show of yours. There’s something in the air that nearly killed him.”

The peasants, grinning happily, lugged the man to the nearest taxi stand. Ballister ordered the hackie to drive to the center of town, where monoxide would most likely replace the pollen or whatever it was that had strangled him.

The man was unable to talk for a few miles, though he insisted, despite the soothing words of Miss Marsh, on pantomiming gratitude. He was a fine-looking gentleman, ruddy-faced, middle-aged or over, exquisitely dressed.

Finally, with one tremendous cough, he cleared his throat. “Thanks awf’ly,” he exclaimed. “Those dim-head hunks would’ve let me perish on the spot!”

“What got you going?” asked Ballister. “Pollen from the hay?”

“Nothing so dashed ordin’ry. Would you believe it? It was mice that nearly did me in. They could get me in about sixty seconds.”

“Why not?” replied Ballister. He thought to introduce himself, adding his official capacity at the Conference.

“Splendid,” muttered the gentleman. “Psychological jurisprudence and all that, I mean! I’m Gaffney, by the way. Sir Mallory. Baronet.”

Kay sat up like a shot; in the next two minutes she had asked him thirty questions and was primed for fifty more. Sir Mallory Gaffney was newsbig newshot news! He was said to be the man who had invented the springing system that made the revolutionary Enfield Armored Wagon a practical and terrible weapon. He was the man behind the gas-cooled tank motor. Likewise the synthesis of rubber from chalk and carbon dioxide, and any number of other departures. And he had never been interviewed before!

Ballister pointedly interrupted the questioning with: “Didn’t know you were at the Conference, Sir Mallory. Any official capacity, or just visiting?”

“Just ordered over, Mr. Ballister. They want my more-or-less expert testimony on this Durtal Bill.”

“Durtal died or vanished without a trace this morning,” said Kay. “Have you done anything in the invisibility line, Sir Mallory?”

The baronet laughed indulgently. “Hardly. You Americans had invisible battleships back in 1941, I hear. Learned the trick from some illusionist chapDunnings, or Kussone of them. But the mirrors lost their silvering in the sea-spray. That’s as far as military invisibility’s gone, I believe.”

Ballister coughed warningly at the girl. “We’d better be getting back to the hotel,” he said in overloud tones. “Sir Mallory’s had a nasty shock.” He filled in the rest of the trip with diplomatic small talk, avoiding the controversial subjects dear to the reportorial heart of Kay.

2

Conspiracy

At the Hotel de Universe et d’Oslo they were all in for a nasty shock. The manager dashed to them as they emerged from the cab, and collared Sir Mallory and Ballister.

“Thank God for both of you!” he cried hysterically. “That this should happen chez moiit is incroyable, the horrible truly that we faceI ruin and you despair!”

“Yeah,” said Ballister skeptically. It was a little thick, believing that the hardheaded manager of a great international hotel could be shaken by anything that could happen in the way of bad luck. “Yeah. Explain yourself.”

“The senator AmericanBeekman, he is vanished from his room.”

A committee head hailed them from across the lobby and came over, looking grave. “He isn’t kidding, Ballister. Beekman’s flitted completely, like Durtal and the others. Right in the middle of a caucus on the Competition Act. Went out toer, went out for a moment and never came back.”

“My seempathie, monsignors,” said a burly, black-haired man. “I have heard of the so-gre-ait loss of thee Amairicain delegation.”

“Thanks, Rasonho,” said the committee head abstractedly. “Maybe he’ll turn up.”

“Lait us hope so. Thee passage of thee Competition Act means vair-ree much to my people.” As he walked off Ballister studied the man. There was something familiar about him, something damned strange to boot. He inquired of the committee man.

“Rasonho? He’s from the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic. Their only delegate. Good sort, but somewhat thick. He doesn’t understand the parliamentary method.”

“And what may the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic be?”

“I did an article on them,” said Kay. “No wonder you missed them, because they popped up while you were at the front. They’re a sort of Basque federation not more than ten thousand of them, I’m sure. Yet they held DeCuerva’s army when he was coming north through the Pyrenees to relieve Milhaud. By heaven, they held him for three months! It’s gone unsung for the most part, but I call it the most remarkable feat of the war.”

“No doubt,” said Ballister abstractedly. “And then, after the Initial Treaty they organized under a simple native President, thinking they had won independence from France and Spain both?”

“That’s right. The Conference recognizes themeven invited the delegate.”

A bomb exploded in the lobby of the hotel; the high ceiling swayed right and left. Screams echoed through the great hall; emergency exits opened onto the street automatically.

“This is intolerable!” fumed Sir Mallory when they had gained cover. “Someonesome partyis trying to destroy the Conference. They’re trying to kill every damned one of usor have us disappear bit by bit!”

“Sure,” said Ballister. He wound a handkerchief around his wrist; flying plaster had clipped a bit of his flesh away. “What do you suggest, sir?”

“Armed guards, Mr. Ballister! We must fight this menace as it is trying to fight us! We must post men in every corridorshoot suspicious persons on sight!”

“By heaven, yes!” snapped Kay. “They’re trying to wreck the Anti-War Conference, and I won’t have it. This is mankind’s chance for peace at last, a final peace that will endure a hundred thousand years. Any dog who’d try to stand in the way of that, try to plunge the world back into the nightmare of war after war, deserves no mercy!”

Ballister looked somewhat sick; the corners of his mouth drooped peculiarly, as though he tasted something unpleasant. Finally he looked square into the eyes of the girl and said without conviction: “Yes. Fight them tooth and nail. The best thing to do.”

The next day at the Conference Auditorium a half-dozen delegates proposed a Defense Act, claiming general privilege to take precedence over other business. After a few hearty seconding speeches which pointed out the danger in which they all stood, there were read the concrete proposals.

The Conference disbanded the International Police, which had been their protective force, as ineffectual. There was organized on the spot an armed force to patrol all Oslo and vicinity, whose right of search was unquestionable, who were able to arrest on suspicion and defer trial indefinitely. The entire Act was passed, a few members abstaining, none voting the negative.

Ballister reported sick to Senator Beekman’s successor. He said that the strain of the work had broken him down, that he needed a few months’ rest. And indeed he was a pitiable sighthaggard, unkempt, eyes dilated, rambling again and again from his subject. The committee head insisted that he take a vacation.

Once outside the Auditorium, the change in Ballister was nearly magical. He slicked back his hair, straightened like a ramrod and generally became his old dynamic self.

At the flying field he took up his ‘gyro. He took it ‘way up, twenty thousand feet and more. Then he headed southeast across the continent. Somewhere over Germany he realized that he was being followed. There were no less than two ‘gyros on his tail, neither of them official.

Like his own craft they were converted warplanes, which, after the fighting had ceased, sold for a dime a dozen. Unlike his own, they carried no markings or national insignia.

Damning his thoughtlessness he set the controls for a straight course and went back to the tail compartment for arms. He found Kay curled up on a crate, blinking in the sudden light.

“Sweet,” he snapped. “I’ll bawl you out for this later. Right now there are two mean-looking rigs on our tail. Can you steer an eccentric course while I handle whatever guns there may be?”

“If there’s two,” she said, “we’d better both handle guns. You set her for flat loops at ceiling speed. I have a scattergun that throws its weight.”

“Right,” said Ballister. He stepped up the speed of the ship to its very top, and then jiggled twenty miles-per-hour more out of the exhaust turbines. He set the controls for a circle, tight and fast. As the setting took and the ship swung he braced himself hard against the wall.

The centrifugal force was enormous; all loose fixtures smacked against the outside wall; he couldn’t lift them off without a crowbar. Kay was battling the inertia, dragging herself along the outside wall into the storage compartment again. After a bit of heavy-handed rummaging she let out a scream of delight.

“Oh boy!” she gloated. “Look!” Painfully she hauled out and displayed a wire net, the kind used for quick repairs of the nacelle. “Get it?”

“I get it,” said Ballister, a slow grin spreading over his face. “Let’s hope they don’t get us first.” The two ships had hauled up nearly alongside and were angling off to the attack. They fired a few tentative bursts at Banister’s ‘gyro, presumably to judge the quality of his reply.

Ballister didn’t reply. It would have been practically impossible to handle a gun against the drag of the whirling ship. But he did unsnap the top hatch, ducking back as the hinges tore loose and the square of metal flew up and out.

“Take it,” said Kay. “I can’t handle this thing alone.” He eased his way along the wall, skirting the open hatch. Getting two big handfuls of the repair net, he dragged it behind him, snagging a corner on a rivet. Kay spread the net on her side while Ballister made ready on his own.

“When I say the word,” the girl ordered, “cast off.” She squinted against the sun, hunting for the two planes. With a whoop and a holler they came out of the dazzle firing at the midriff of the ‘gyro.

“Right,” she said calmly, unsnagging the net and chucking it through the hatch simultaneously with Ballister’s machine-like gestures. It spread beautifully in flight, came at the lead plane two square yards of metal moving at high speed.

The plane tried to shoot it out of the sky first, then tried to dodge. The metal netting slammed dead into the prop, splintering and wrecking as it passed on, balled up, into the stabilizer-vane.

The second plane pulled up sharply, fired a parting burst at the ‘gyro and cold-bloodedly bombed the crippled and falling companion. There was nothing left but a few drifting fragments by the time Ballister had pulled out of the flat circles.

“Now why did he do that?” wondered Kay.

“It wasn’t a mercy-shot by any means,” said Ballister. “They have their secrets, whoever they are. Put that in your notebook: they don’t let themselves be taken alive.”

“Sinister people,” said Kay with a small shudder. “They tend to distress me.”

3

Progress

They were ready to fire on the ship that overtook them above the south of France, but Kay held back Ballister’s hand.

“I’m blowed,” she declared, “if I’ve ever seen a ship as big and fancy as that one with a single-passenger rating on its side. Probably some rich coot who wants to talk to us.”

It was a magnificent shipbig, enormously roomy, considering that its regulation number registered it as a single-seater. It had one of the biggest and latest engines, capable of five hundred and upwards, was amphibian, had auxiliary parachute packs and all the trimmings of a luxury liner.

Ballister tuned in on his wave. “Stop crowding me,” he snapped. “There’s lots of air for you.”

A familiar voice came back: “Sorry, old man. I didn’t want to contact you until I was sure it was you. This is Gaffney speaking, by the by.” There was a good-humored chuckle.

“OhSir Mallory!” exclaimed Ballister, aghast. “Sorry I barked at you. How come you’re following meif you are?”

“I am, right enough. Don’t worryI feel like a vacation, same as you. And”, a sinister note of strain crept into the baronet’s voice”I know when my life’s in danger. There’ve been no less than three attacks on me before I decided to light out. Used this old crategift from the grateful Royal Academy and all thatto follow you; you left a decently marked trail over Europe. Oneahone presumes you’re heading for the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic?”

“Exactly. I won’t hobble your ship, Sir Mallory. You go on ahead and I’ll taxi in. It ought to be a few minutes ahead. Have they got a landing field?”

“The best. I was talking with that delegate chap of theirsRasonhotells me that once the traditionally anarchistic Basques got together they’ve worked miracles in a dozen years. Mountains rich in oresloan from Germanygot smelters and all.”

Ballister looked down and saw the landing field he had been promised. It was a honey; hard-surfaced, triple-tracked, on a small scale perhaps the best in Europe.

“Set it down, Sir Mallory. I’ll follow.” The big plane landed with mechanical ease; Ballister cross-winded and touched Mother Earth again. He emerged with Kay to shake hands with the nobleman.

“Charmed to see you here!” exclaimed Sir Mallory. “But?” He left the question unanswered.

Sternly Ballister explained: “This young lady, with the romantic misconceptions common to the gentlemen and ladies of the press assumed that I was going off on a secret mission for the Conference. Naturally she could think of no simpler way to spy on me than to stow away in the tail of my ‘gyro.”

“And a lucky thing for him that I did,” snapped Kay. She explained the dodge, the attack, and the happy ending. The baronet was fascinated and enraged.

“Who could it be?” he exploded. “Russia? Germany? Britain?”

“Dunno,” said Ballister. “Whoever it is has lots on the balland a couple of blind spots.”

Mechanics, burly, tall fellows, drove out to their planes in a sort of motorbike. “Speak English?” asked one, after sizing them up.

“Rather well,” answered the nobleman with a grin. “We’re by way of being unofficial delegates of goodwill from the Anti-War Conference at Oslo. Whom do you suggest we see?”

“MayorPedro Marquesch. We attend to planesdrive you into city. We are honored.”

They stowed the planes into solidly built hangars, then loaded the visitors into the back of a big, new-style car. “Autos,” the mechanic explained, “were import from Germany. We use not manytwenty among us, perhaps.”

The car sped along a neat, narrow highway chiseled from the living rock of the Pyrenees. Their mechanic, with a sort of stolid pride in his people, pointed out the waterworks, the gasworks and a couple of outlying factories. With a smile at Sir Mallory he explained: “All smells to leeward of city. Not like London.”

“After the Conference, my friend,” said the noble, in a good humor, “we’ll strive to overstrip your very high degree of civilization.”

The car was pulled up to a halt. The driver pointed proudly: “Hydroelectric dam. Big power output. No smell. Two years old.”

Ballister stared at the work. It wasn’t as big as Dnieperstroy had been, but in its own way it was a work of genius, plain to see. Every block of concrete seemed to have a peculiar rightness about it; the solitary blockhouse that surmounted the turbine house seemed somehow to be perfectly situated.

“Masterly,” said Ballister. Kay nodded soberly. The man smiled a little as he drove on.

Suddenly they were in the city. It wasn’t centralized and there were no skyscrapers; one skyscraper, indeed, could have held the entire population of the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic. But there were clearly defined sections. The residential city was a series of houses of ample size, in the Basque tradition of sturdy construction, each with its acres of lawn automatically sprinkled and presumably cut. The factory district was tree-shaded and sprawling; though there were no more than a dozen buildings.

The driver pointed out the business, administrative and scientific area, the tallest buildings in the city. They were symbolically white and severe, tall and thin like ascetic monks.

They were dropped at a hotel-like affair of three stories.

“Completely automatic,” said their driver. “No payguests of the state. We have a few of them. This was for German and French tradesmen.”

Wondering, they went in. There were clean, spare accommodations; signs in French advised them that they could eat at such-and-such a place at certain hours.

Sir Mallory excused himself, with a regretful, though humorous, confession that he was aging out of all proportion.

“Well?” asked the girl, inspecting their communal sitting-room.

“Uncanny,” said Ballister. “Damned if I know whether I should be delighted or annoyed. I’m both. There’s something so awfully queer going on that I shudder to think of it. Little over a dozen years ago these Basques were an anarchistic lot, living family lives.

“Lord! In those twelve years they’ve completely transferred their allegiance from the family to the state, obviously gone in for heavy cooperationremember that dambuilt a model city, and, it seems, done away with crime. It’s impossible. It’s against all reason.”

“You must be terribly afraid of progress,” said Kay thoughtfully.

“No,” said Ballister. “Not development. Not normal evolution. That’s growth. But this lunatic speed is more like a cancer than normal social achievement. I thinkI’m sure! there’s something behind this slew of nonconformities.”

“And,” exploded Kay, her temper snapping like a rubber band, “I’m dead certain that this is a milestone in the history of manand that this Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic is destined to be one of the great powers of the world!” She slammed into her room.

“Good night!” yelled Ballister after her.

He slept that night to dream of cancerous proliferations spreading their sickly-white fingers over the map of Europe, then snaking across the ocean and plunging a dagger into the heart of the Western Hemisphere.

Kay couldn’t stay mad, no more than could Ballister. They apologized sweetly to each other at breakfast under the paternal eyes of Sir Mallory, then set out for the Mayor’s office. People on the streets, big men and solid, tall women stopped to stare at them for a moment before hurrying on to the day’s work. The mayor was the Basque type, but bald as an egg. His grin was slow and agreeable; he had a firm handshake.

“You like our small country?” he asked.

“We admire it enormously,” hedged Ballister. “I was commenting last night on your excessively rapid growth.” He shot a malicious glance at Kay.

“Indeed? We explain that, you know, with the theory that the Basque spirit has been in its infancy for many centuries and is now at last growing up. That you may tell the outside worldbut not too much of it. We should not wish to become an attraction for tourists. It is our opinion that there is work to be done, that we Basques are well-suited to do it. You would be amazed at the spirit of collaboration that exists among us.”

“I already am,” said Ballister. “Your city is the finest example of communal activity I have ever seen.” There was something flat and deadly in his tone which even he could not explain.

They had been spending a marvelously restful five days in the Republic, not bothering to think. Alone for a couple of moments Kay abstractedly confessed: “Isn’t it remarkable that even the great Sir Mallory Gaffney, Baronet, can be a hell of a bore after some period of unmitigated companionship?”

“His conversation sparkles,” said Ballister noncommittally. “It scintillates like the morning sun on dewdrops. He’s a generous and a kindly old gentleman. He’s wise and good and noblebut I tend to agree with you; I’m sick of the sight of him. Sir Mallory tends to inhibit intellection. I haven’t been able to buckle down to a problem in the last few days without his kindly interrupting and helping out with horribly confusing results.”

“You’ve noticed that?” she asked, with wide-open eyes. “Is he just trying to help us relax?”

“Dunno. He has a techniqueI’m working with something in social growth, say. He interrupts. I expound. He ponders, then throws in so damned many elements that I don’t know what to make of it. He may be right! He’s near the genius level, I know. But I believe in tackling one problem at a time. He, obviously, doesn’t.”

“Or,” suggested the girl, “pretends he doesn’t.”

They dummied up as Sir Mallory reentered. He sensed the tension and then went through a curious process of winking, snickering slightly and balancing on one foot.

Kay and Ballister exchanged glances. Sir Mallory grinned happily. “Aha!” he said.

Ballister caught on. “Well, dear,” he said, “shall we go for a ride?” The glance he gave the girl was saccharine refined with an eye for sweetness. It was so paralyzingly mushy that Kay reeled beneath the wealth of sloppy sentiment. She studied for one wild moment the silly smile on his facethen caught on.

“Anything you say, sweetness,” she cooed.

They twined arms then, and after another sloppy pair of looks ambled out. Sir Mallory called after them with huge delight:

“Be good, children!” His chuckle followed them down the rustic lane they chose. Out of sight and earshot they untwined and sat heavily on a bench. “Explain all that,” she said. “What was in the air?”

“Lo-o-ove,” said Ballister, polishing his horn-rims. “Not the kind that means anything, the kind that mates people for life and after. But the kind of puppy-love that you can hardly call an emotion, it’s so animal and unreasoning. I refer to the sort of stuff that every middle-aged man has a soft spot in his head for. Further, he reasoned correctlyon incorrect premisesthat we’d be incapable of comparing notes on him and this hellish place if we were otherwise occupied. His error.”

“Hellish?” asked Kay. “That’s strong.”

“Agreed. Do you recall the exact population of this place?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Never mind just yet. It’s 7,776. Half male and half female. Note that it’s a perfect number, divisible by the whole slew of integers, a perfect radical, it evolves into an integral root”

“Sure!” she exploded. “I see! So they’rethey’re” Kay paused, baffled.

“I know how you feel.” Ballister smiled sympathetically. “There’s something stuck away in the back of one’s head that’s just a little distance beyond explanation, just a little too deeply buried for unearthing. What is it? Damned if I can tell you, but it’s very important.” He laughed sardonically.

“The baronet comes,” said Kay. Ballister embraced her violently; she nearly bit a hunk out of his ear.

“Excuse me,” said the noble kindly. “The mayorMarqueschsuggested that we inspect the landing field. He wants to know if we can offer any suggestions for improving traffic-flow. Thinks that there’s going to be lots of commerce on that hunk of soil.”

“May well be,” said Kay, dropping her eyes with maidenly modesty. “These wonderful people of the Republic! How do they do it?”

“Cooperation,” said Ballister, straightening his tie. “They work as one man. That’s the secret.” He went into a brown study, trailing behind the two others as they walked along the rustic path to the waiting auto. “Cooperation as one man,” he muttered to himself more than once.

4

Flight

Kay sat up in bed, snapped on the light. “Who’s there?” she demanded.

“Me,” whispered Ballister. “Let me in!”

“What?” In spite of herself she smiled. “What on Earth made you think that I”

“Pipe down! This isn’t lust; it’s terror. We’ve got to get moving fast! They’re onto us somehow.”

The girl slipped into some clothes, threw on a coat. The moment she was through the door, Ballister grabbed her arm and hurried her out of the hostel along the street.

“What time is it?” she asked, squinting at the full moon.

“Three Ayemwish I could say all’s well.”

There was a shot in the night; the long streak of flame that a rifle-barrel throws split the darkness of the street. Ballister reeled a little and cursed.

“Where to?” asked the girl, supporting him. He was hit in the shoulder.

“Garage. Hurry it up.” They slunk into the darkness of a double lane of trees, slipping along like a pair of shadows. The girl was still wearing bedroom slippers; Ballister was in his stocking feet. There was no noise whatsoever and scarcely a light in all the residential area.

Again the streak of flame, again the sudden crack of the rifle. “Nowhere near,” said Ballister, his voice barely audible. “Faster.”

Running in the dark, making no noise at all, speeding through relatively unfamiliar ground, they made good time. The garage loomed before them, one of the squat, white, solid buildings of the city.

Ballister, flinging off her helping arm, tore open the wide wing doors and darted in. She slipped behind like a ghost.

“Light!” he said. She fumbled for the switch, snapped it on.

Kay watched as Ballister hunted for a crowbar among the little group of municipal automobiles, found one, and proceeded to bash the mechanical guts out of all the cars save one. Kay started the motor of that one.

He had hurled the bar through the last motor and collapsed beside her in the driver’s seat when the custodians appeared, and in arms. One of the tall, solid Basque types raised a long rifle, took steady aim

Kay hurled three tons of metal square at him and through the’ door. The pick-up of the auto was superb; its mechanical springs took up the shock of the body as though they had never hit it.

Through the streets of the city they rocketed, lightless while Ballister fumbled for the switch. The construction was somewhat unfamiliar; he collapsed totally before finding it. Kay snapped the running lights on, not daring to glance at the man by her side.

She turned onto the airport road. Behind her there was the roar of a second motor. In the rear-vision mirror she saw two pale purple circles that were the running-lights of a pursuing car.

A brief chatter of metallic slugs on the car’s tail told her of a semi-automatic rifle at the least. If it were a machine gun she knew they’d never get out of this chase scene alive. The rattle sounded again. There was no whang of bullets penetrating metal. Kay breathed again, in relief.

Europeans in special cars used to hold the speed-records for ground-travel, on a straight track. That was probably because no American girl had ever bothered to enter the lists against them. Kay had teethed on a piston-ring and broken the speed-laws by the age of twelve. Since then her progress had been rapid; she knew cars backwards and forwards and overturned. She knew every trick of the throttle and gas, knew how to squeeze another mile-per-minute out of the most ancient wreck on the roads.

The municipal car was of unfamiliar make; it took her about five minutes to size up its possibilities; when she had, she sped quite out of sight of the pursuing car.

“Wake up,” she yelled at the man by her side. “If you aren’t dead, for heaven’s sake, wake up!”

There was a vague gesture from the figure, and a dim smile on its face. “Knew you’d do it,” Ballister murmured. “Keep going, Kay. Get Sir Mallory’s plane out, Kay. Back to Oslo we go” The murmured words were stilled.

Wondering if her friend were dead, she stepped more speed out of the car, hauled up before the deserted airfield. The hangar-doors were merely latched against the weather; she swung them open and switched on the lights.

The ornate, fast plane of the noble was balanced feather-like on its dozen retractable landing wheels; she trundled it out of the shed and managed to load Ballister into it.

From the road came the roar of a motor; far in the night was the gleam of headlights. Kay fiddled with the controls, backed the plane into the wind. The car shot onto the landing field, tried to cross before the plane and force her around. She lifted a little, swung around the auto, ducked at the rattle of a gun. The control panel splintered into fragments of plastic and metal; alcohol ran over her knees.

Mercifully, the plane rose as she yanked wildly at the stick with no response. It headed diagonally up, its course quite straight. The stick and the pedals were quite dead. And there were no dual controls.

Into the night they flew, at the mercy of the wind, far above the landing field, in the heart of the jagged Pyrenees.

Their luck, such as it was, didn’t last; one of the peaks loomed before them. Kay had just enough time to cover the body of Ballister, wondering if he were still alive, if he would survive this, if she would, when the plane struck.

5

Revelation

Someone was singing, she noticed, with an altogether inappropriate glee, an objectionable song about his Majesty, the King of Spain.

“Stow it, Hoe,” ordered the voice of Ballister. “Let the lady rest.”

She sat up violently. “You!” she said. “What happened” She felt a curious weakness in the middle and sat back again. “What’s up?”

Ballister approached, relief glowing all over his face. “You had us worried. You’ve been on a liquid diet for a week without once coming up for air. How’d you like to tear into a steak?”

“Love it,” she snapped, realizing that the sense of weakness had been hunger. “Any potatoes?”

“You’ll have rice instead. May I present Jose Bazasch.” He led forward by one hand a shy little old man who wore the Basque beret.

“An honor,” he muttered incoherently. “Fine ladiesnoble gentlemen in my cave”

“Tell your story, Hoe,” suggested Ballister grimly. He speared a broiled steak from its string where it turned over the fire. A slab of washed bark served very well for a platter.

“The story? This. I am Jose Bazasch, a Basque. A dozen years ago, during the wars, there were many Basques. I was sheep-thiefoutlaw. Lived here in the cave. I am no more thief because there are no more sheep. There are no more Basques except me.”

“If you’ll excuse the omission,” said Kay, chomping busily, “I’m eating too energetically to register surprise. Kindly explain in words of one syllable or less.”

“Okay, child. Your brains would be addled after your long illness. I’ll begin at the beginning. There was a slew of Iberians along about the beginnings of the Christian era who were decimated by, in rapid succession, the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, Huns, Saracens and their most holy majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella.

“That brings us down to 1939, the beginning of the war. The few Basques left fight with the French, the Spanish and any other army they fancy. Most of them die. A few thousand are left in the lower mountain villages. One day in 1951 the villages are bombed by German planesblown right off the map. Squads of soldiers hunt down the rest of the Basques in the hills and pop them off.”

“But not Jose!” interjected the old man with considerable excitement and a little pride.

“That’s right. Not Jose. Hoe was so well hidden that half the time he couldn’t find his own den for a month once he had left it. Anywaythere aren’t any Basque villages nor any Basques. Yet the next year the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic is announced and in the next they held DeCuerva’s army, which never did get through. Now, a dozen years later we see this uncannily perfect city of the future, achieved by a handful of men and womenwhom we’ve seenand that’s that.”

“That’s what?” asked the girl abstractedly.

“That’s what I was planning to ask you as soon as you regained consciousness.”

“You’ve waited in vain,” said Kay, licking her fingers. “I can’t think on a full stomach. Nobody can. By the way, you neglected to explain the events of the night of a week ago. How did you know they suspected us of suspecting them of being not what they seemed to be?”

“You know the Mayor’s office building?”

“Like a book. I might almost say I know it backwards.”

“Right, child. You do know it backwards, and what’s more you don’t know the half of it. Because more than the half of it is underground. I bumbled on the Mayor that night going down into the basement of his building and asked if I could go too. Taking something of a chance I pushed by him before he could make an excuse.

“I guess he didn’t have a gun, because I wasn’t shot in the back for seeing what I saw. There were some machines there that make their hydroelectric turbines look like a pinwheel. Bigvery bigand mysterious in function, to me at least. Simply didn’t look like anything at allexcept maybe a glorified and electric concrete mixer. And a couple of people mucking around with oiling-cans.

“They drew and fired; I shoved the mayor in and rolled the hall-desk against the door, propped that with my walking-stick for leverage and beat it for your flat.”

“Nice condensed narration,” she said thoughtfully. “But what made you poke around in the first place? Dashed if I had any grounds for suspicion of conspiracy and such.”

“You’ve forgotten a lot since we took those psych courses. How do you tell a louse from an honest man?”

“A louse doesn’t trust anybody.”

“Right. Not even when he’s middle aged does he trust a couple of moonstruck lovers. Any nasty old man who’d break in on a tete-a-tete is bad from head to toe.

“And the clincher, to me at least, was this bloody, mysterious and cancerous growth of the so-called Basque people in less than two decades. There was something too awfully methodical about their city. It didn’t show any of the right traits. No, not a single one. It was as though they’d deliberately set out to build themselves a city of the future intended to impress and amazeone, also, geared to the maximum in efficiency.”

Kay listened quietly. Finally she suggested, with a little shudder: “Gestapo?”

“Couldn’t be anything else, sweet.” Ballister fell silent in the contemplation of bucking the secret police that had held the German empire of conquest together by torture, fire and sword for years beyond its normal lifespan. They were wise, villainous and tricky, the Gestapo.

It had been thought that the majority of them had been killed off by the Captives’ Revolt years ago. Surely there couldn’t be enough left to fill that city!

“It’s a bridgehead,” he said at last. “A stepping-stone for attack on an unprecedented scale and in an altogether new technique. You guess what that is?”

“Like the story about the rabbits, perhaps,” Kay suggested diffidently. “There were two rabbits being chased by a pack of hounds. They were tired, completely winded. There was no chance of them outrunning the hounds, who were young and fresh. So one rabbit said to the other rabbit: ‘Let’s hide in that bush until we outnumber them.’ “

“Maybe,” said Ballister. “Too bad reconnaissance is out of the question. They must be patrolling the woods seven deep looking for us.” He brooded for a while, then exploded: “And the young monster of a hydro-dam? What’s that for?”

“Electric light,” said Kay. She reconsidered after a moment. “No. Because they have a strict curfew, so they don’t need street-lights. And that dam would deliver twenty times the power needed for street-lighting. Maybe a hundred times that. I’m no installations engineer, boy.”

“It’s very important, that dam. Otherwise they wouldn’t risk building a big, suspicious thing like that. And they do want to hide it; they did their best along that line to keep us from noticing it.”

“What?” squeaked the girl. “That chauffeur stopped the car and pointed it out, and we’ve been taken to inspect it half a dozen times! Keep us from noticing it, forsooth!”

Ballister sat quietly and grinned like a cat.

The girl considered, then blushed and admitted shamefacedly: “You’re right. They even fooled me, the psychist. They threw it into our faces so often that we were supposed to take it for granted and not think about the thing. The Purloined Letter, et seq.”

“Good kid!” said Ballister with faked heartiness. “I wish to heaven that one of us was a real scientistphysics and nuclear chemistry. Because the one purpose of that dam is obviously to power the machinery I saw in the basement before the chase-scene. And I don’t know what the machinery does …”

“So it’s all solved, huh?” Kay asked belligerently. “As simple as pi square? The Gestapo’s been repudiated by the German people, so they choose this method as a bridgehead on the continent for future use when the Swastika shall ride again.”

“That’s what it looks like,” said Ballister self-satisfiedly.

“Things are seldom what they seem. That’s what it ain’t. How would even a heavily-disciplined Gestapo unit do what they’ve done in the time they’ve had?”

Ballister was rocked back on his heels. “Blast it,” he said bitterly. “The man-hour formulae make it a rank impossibility. It’s so far outside the realms of possibility that I’d bet my boots on it.” A thought struck him: “But the city’s there, Kay!”

“Ignore it, boy. There’s trickery involved. We’ll have to find out where.” He looked at her glumly. “Reconnaissance?”

“Yep. Both of us.”

Bazasch knew things about stalking that would pop the eyes of a Scottish stag-hunter. He had the knack of slipping along without enough covering to hide a rabbit, and in the little space of a week he tried to teach Kay and Ballister what he knew. In his own inarticulate way he got some of the principles over, though he despaired of ever making guerillistas of them.

Mournfully he explained that one had to be born to the fellowhood of stalkers and then be taken in hand by a wise old man who could explain things. He, Jose, could not explain. So long he had not talked to anybody but himself that the language sometimes seemed to be going altogether.

And between the grueling hikes-under-cover in the mountains the two Americans were gathering together their data, inferring wildly, working sometimes by association rather than logic, jumping through time and space in their reasoning rather than let go of a theory.

They evolved conclusiveto themproof that Sir Mallory was the prime scoundrel behind the Pyrenese Peoples’ Republic. Checking back on his mental notebook Ballister recalled what might be considered evidence to that effect:

“I had my eyes on him the moment he showed up in our little twosome. Whether he’s the real Sir Mallory turned traitor doesn’t matter much. He may have popped the real Sir Mallory and taken his place with disguises. Anyway, you recall the outrageous bombing of the Hotel de Oslo et d’Universe, or whatever it was. That was the feeblest bombing I ever encountered, and yet Sir Mallory and a few old hens got excited about it.

“He proposed a military police of unlimited powers. That was a very bad sign. It was the first step towards wrecking the Conference. It denied democracy itself, the principle the Conference was constructed on. There could have been no bombing or killing half so disruptively effective as that move.”

Kay wearily agreed. Her knees were scratched, and her hands were calloused with crawling. But she’d got over her illness and felt hard as nails. The rough-and-ready bullet extraction that Bazasch had performed on Ballister had healed nicely.

6

Showdown

On the big night there was no moon. Jose had planned it that way, he claimed. They started at dusk, carrying their first two meals.

It was a horrible grind for an old man, a girl and a recently-shot person. They made crevasses that seemed impossible, climbed lofty trees to sight. After some hours of the terrible labor they sighted the lights of the landing field glowing dimly through the night. Fearing no cars they made good time along the highway, turning quietly into three roadside shadows when they passed the blockhouse that surmounted the dam. They found the city to be a bigger blotch of black in the general darkness.

Slipping down the alleys and lanes of the city, silent as so many ghosts, the three made their way to the center of town. By prearranged plan Ballister unlatched the front door of the Mayor’s little office building.

They entered behind him; Ballister felt for the cellar door. It swung open and a blaze of light poured through, shocking, dazzling after the hours-long trek through pitch-blackness.

“Aha!” whispered Bazasch. His cat’s eyes contracted; from his belt flicked a knife, eight wicked inches of blank steel. It slipped through the air, lodged in the throat of a burly “Basque” who had made the mistake of drawing his gun.

“Close it,” said Kay, dashing down the stairs to kick the gun away from the hand of the “Basque,” wounded but not yet dead. She finished him for the moment with a kick to the side of his head.

Ballister and Bazasch tore after her, the door bolted as securely as it could be.

Kay inspected the tower of machinery, marvelling. “Don’t ask me,” she finally griped. “I agree with my ignorant colleague. Whatever it is, it drinks lots of juice and it looks like a concrete mixer.”

Ballister picked up the gun. It was a hefty hand-weapon, a wide-gage projector of lead slugs that mushroomed effectively. “What do we do now?” he asked weakly. “That individual sent in an alarm, to be sure, before he even drew.”

“Take a good look,” said Kay. She indicated the man on the concrete flooring. “Isn’t the face familiar?”

“There’s a swell resemblance to that old rascal, Sir Mallory Gaffney. You mean it?”

“Nothing but that. What’s it signify?”

“You have me there. What is it, Hoe?”

“It is the besiegerscan be no others. They come!”

There was the clump of boots outside, up the stairs.

Ballister slipped Bazasch the gun: “Can you hold them, Hoe? Hold them by yourself? Because we’re going to be busy down here. Will you?”

The Basque took the gun, sighted along its barrel for a moment before slowly replying: “They must have killed my whole family, which I disgraced by becoming sheep-thief. I will no longer disgrace.”

“Good man,” gasped Ballister, holding his wounded shoulder. “Go get ‘em!”

The little man scrambled up the stairs, chose a shallow niche. A big grin spread over his face as he raised his gun-muzzle and fired once through the door. He commanded the position completely; while his ammunition lastedhe neatly caught the pouch Kay unhooked from the man and tossed up to himhe was impregnable.

With feverish speed Ballister stripped the man on the flooring. Kay went through the pockets; came up triumphantly with a slim pamphlet. “In German!” she explained.

“Let me.” He took the little book and ruffled through it, then cast a despairing glance at the monstrous mechanism that nearly filled the room. “It’s a handbook for this thingthe German for it is duplo-atomic-radexic-multiplic-convertor. What do you suppose that means? The wiring’s beyond me completely. I couldn’t repair an electric bell.”

She took the thing and unfolded the gatefold wiring-diagram, studied it with wrinkled brows. “Sweet Lord of Creation!” she muttered. “I have to crack this on an empty stomach!” Whipping out a pencil she tracedtried to tracethe wires and tubes to their source. Finally she snapped: “There’s a switchboard somewhere on the side of the thing. Find it, please.”

Ballister hunted, finally climbing the rickety iron ladder that led to the summit of the machine. “Got it!” he said. “And it makes sense!”

“Turn on the power,” she called at him.

He threw the switch that seemed appropriate. His reward was a shock that nearly threw him from the structure. But the power went through; tubes lit here and there.

Eagerly Kay hunted in the vitals of the mechanism, comparing it with the diagram. “See a hopper-opening?” she asked.

Jose fired three times in rapid succession, brought four dead “Basques” tumbling down the stairs. He waved cheerily at Ballister.

“There’s a switch for it,” he said, throwing it down. A metal shutter opened; its cavernous maw led into blackness. Kay, shuddering a little, peered in. “Ought to light,” she said desperately. “There should be a battery of tubes that the raw materialwhatever it ispassed under. Fish for it, will you?”

Ballister stabbed at a switch; gears began to clank like a windmill’s crushers. He tried another. “Okay!” yelled the girl. “They light!”

He scrambled down, squatted beside her. She had cast the book aside and was weeping. “Here,” she sobbed, “all the power we need, a machine that does something terrible and wonderful to it, and we can’t use it! We don’t know how!”

Ballister, before replying, administered a mercy-kick to one of the “Basques” who was trying to reach his gun, wounded as he was. Jose caught the weapon. He was grinning with fiendish delight as he fired another burst through the door.

Ballister and Kay rose. The girl’s tears dried on her face as she studied the three new corpses.

“Spitting images,” said Ballister, his throat hoarse. This was something uncanny, something that transcended warfare and science. Except for minor details of hair-line and clothes, the four bodies were alikeall the image of Sir Mallory.

“I get it,” said the girl briskly. “There was talk of it in a Sunday feature I did. It’s the only simple, logical explanation for your city of the future built as if by one man. It was built by one man, and he was Sir Mallory.”

“That’s what the machine does,” snapped Ballister. “Rearranges molecules to suit the pattern. Set the pattern for a man and feed in your raw material, and out come as many copies as you want. Perfect war-unit, perfect rapport between and among the slew of them. Perfect for spy-systems. And the Gestapo flair for disguises took care of enough variations to satisfy us. Hell, who’d look for a thing like that?”

The girl was scrambling up the stairs again. “Excuse me,” she barked rudely at Bazasch. “Not at” he was beginning to reply. He shut his mouth with a snap as she began to undress him without ceremony.

She pulled from his chest his home-made undershirt, fingered the soft, short-cropped fur. “Go right ahead,” she said. “Thanks.”

“Brilliant,” admitted Ballister after a moment’s thought. “Utterly brilliant. Very sure you can make it work?”

“For a simple thing like this, yes. After all, dead flesh-tissue ought to be fairly simple. Now where is the pattern-maker or whatever they call it?”

“Maybe this?” asked the man, indicating a sort of scanning-disk, like an old-style television set’s.

“Nothing else!” she declared triumphantly as she set the hunk of clothing in the area covered by the disc.

Ballister picked up the corpses one by one and chucked them into the hopper.

Another hinged door raised itself and soft scraps of fur began to pour from it in a stream that ended in a few minutes, when the weight of the pile equalled about seven hundred pounds.

“Thank God for Hoe’s dainty taste in undergarments,” said the girl. “Nothing less than mouse-fur for his skin!”

“Open the door, Hoe!” called Ballister. The little man obeyed, dumb and. surprised. There was an immediate influx of the duplicates of Sir Mallory, an influx that turned into a helpless pile of dying men, strangling in the last extremes of allergic reaction.

Grimly contemplating the last of the twitching Mallories, Ballister said: “We’ll clear the city by spreading these mouse-skins neatly through the streets. We can rain them on the forest, in case anybody’s escaped.”

“We can detect spies with them,” said the girl.

“Right. A load will be useful when we fly back to Oslo in the morning.” “It’s morning now,” she said, indicating the ray of dawn that streaked through the door and splashed down the stairs.

“It is. Morning,” said Ballister. “Morning over the world.”

Table of Contents

Start