The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Silver Menace, by Murray Leinster
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Title: The Silver Menace
Author: Murray Leinster
Release Date: December 5, 2015 [EBook #50622]
Language: English
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The Silver Menace
Murray Leinster
[Transcriber's Note: This etext produced from
The Thrill Book, September 1, 1919 and September 15, 1919]
The yacht was plowing through the calm waters with a steady throbbing
of the engines. The soft washing of the waves along the sides, the
murmur of the wind through the light rigging aloft, and the occasional
light footstep of the navigating officer on the bridge were the only
sounds.
The long white vessel swept on through the night in silence. Here and
there a light showed from some port-hole or window, but for the most
part the whole boat was dark and silent. For once the yacht contained
no merry party of guests to one-step on the wide decks and fill all the
obscurer corners with accurately paired couples.
Alexander Morrison, millionaire steamship magnate, and his daughter
Nita had the ship to themselves. They were sitting in two of the big
wicker chairs on the after deck, and the glow of Morrison's cigar was
the only light.
"Getting chilly, Nita," he remarked casually. "Are you warm enough?"
"Yes, indeed." Nita was silent for a moment, gazing off into the
darkness. "It's nice," she said reflectively, "to be by one's self for
a while. I'm glad you didn't invite a lot of people to come back with
us."
Her father smiled.
"Judging by the way you behaved along the Riviera," he reminded her,
"you didn't mind company. I never saw any one quite so run after as
you were."
Nita shook her head.
"They were running after you, daddy," she said lightly. "I was just a
means of approach."
Her father puffed on his cigar for a moment in silence.
"It is a disadvantage, having a millionaire for a father," he admitted.
"It's hard to tell who is in love with you, and who is in love with
your father's money."
"So the thing to do, I suppose," said Nita amusedly, "is just to fall
in love with some one yourself, and pay no attention to his motives."
"Where do you get your notions?" asked her father. "That's cynicism.
You haven't been practicing on that theory, have you?"
"Not I," said Nita with a little silvery laugh. "But you know, daddy,
it isn't nice to feel like a money bag with a lot of people looking at
you all the time, some of them enviously and some of them covetously,
but none of them regarding you just like a human being."
"I don't see," declared her father, with real affection, "how any
normal young man who looked at you could stop thinking about you long
enough to think about your money."
"I rise and bow," said Nita mischievously. "May I return the
compliment, substituting 'young woman' for 'young man'?"
"Don't try to fool your father," that gentleman said with a smile. He
added with something of conscious pride: "I don't suppose there are two
other men in America as homely as I am."
"Daddy!" protested Nita, laughing. "You're lovely to look at! I
wouldn't have you look a bit different for worlds."
"Neither would I have myself look different," her father admitted
cheerfully. "I've gotten used to myself this way. I like to look at
myself this way. It's an acquired taste like olives, but once you
learn to like me this way--why, there you are."
Nita laughed and was silent. Suddenly she began to look a little bit
puzzled.
"Do you notice anything funny?" she asked in a moment or so. "Somehow,
the boat doesn't seem to be traveling just right."
Her father listened. Only the usual sounds came to his ears. The
washing of the waves along the sides, however, had a peculiar timbre.
Then he noticed that the boat seemed to be checking a little in its
speed. There was an odd, velvety quality in the checking, very much
like the soft breaking effect felt when a motor boat runs into a patch
of weed.
"Queer," said Morrison. "We'll ask the captain."
The two of them walked down the deck arm in arm until they came to the
stair ladder leading up to the bridge. The gentle checking continued.
The boat seemed to be gradually slowing up, though the engines throbbed
on as before.
"What's the matter, captain?" asked Morrison.
His first mate answered:
"I've sent for the captain, sir. Our speed has fallen off three knots
in the past five minutes."
The captain came hastily up on the bridge, buttoning up his coat as he
came.
"What's the matter, Mr. Harrison?"
The first mate turned a worried face to him.
"Our speed has dropped off three knots in five minutes, sir, and seems
to be still slackening. I thought it best to send for you."
The captain called up the engine room.
"All right down there?"
"Per-rhaps," came the answer in a thick Scotch burr. "Ah was aboot to
ask ye the same mysel'. We're usin' twenty perr cent more steam for the
same number of rrevolutions."
"We might have run into a big patch of seaweed," suggested the first
mate.
"Unship the searchlight," said the captain crisply.
A seaman came up to the bridge. He had been sent back to look at the
patent log.
"We're logging eight knots now, sir."
The first mate uttered an exclamation.
"That's six knots off what we were making ten minutes ago!"
No one spoke for a moment or so, while one or two seamen worked at the
lashing of the cover on the searchlight.
"Do any of you smell anything?" asked Nita suddenly.
A faint but distinct odor came to their nostrils. It was the odor of
slime and mud, with a tinge of musk. It was the scent of foul things
from the water. It was a damp and humid smell, indistinctly musklike
and disgusting.
"Like deep-sea mud," said one of the seamen to the other. "Like
somethin' come up from Gawd knows what soundin'."
Nita gasped a little. The searchlight sputtered and then a long, white
pencil of light shot out over the water. It wavered, and sank to a
point just beside the bow of the boat. It showed--nothing.
The bow wave rose reluctantly and traveled but a little distance before
it subsided into level sea. There were no waves. The water was calm as
an inland lake.
"No seaweed there," said the captain sharply. "Look on the other side."
The searchlight swept across the deck and to the water on the other
side. Nothing. The water seemed to be turgidly white, but that was
all. It was not clear; it was rather muddy and almost milklike, as if
a little finely divided chalk had been stirred in it. There was no
disturbance of its placid surface. Only the reluctant bow wave surged
away from the sharp prow of the yacht.
The seaman returned from a second trip to the patent log.
"We're logging five knots now, sir."
"Nine knots off," said the first mate with a white face. "We were
making fourteen."
"We'll take a look all around," said the captain sharply.
The searchlight obediently swept the surface of the water. Every one
on the bridge followed its exploring beam with anxious eyes. That
musky, musty smell of things from unthinkable depths and the mysterious
retardation of their vessel filled them with apprehension.
There was not one of them, from the ignorant seamen to the
supereducated Morrison, who did not look fearfully where the light beam
went.
The hand laid on the vessel--that in a calm sea had slowed from
fourteen knots to five, despite the mighty engines within the
hull--that force seemed of such malignant power that none of them would
have been greatly surprised to see the huge bulk of some fabled Kraken
rearing itself above the water, preparing to engulf the yacht with a
sweep of some colossal tentacle.
The sea was calm. As far as the searchlight could light up its surface
not a wave broke its calm placidity.
The seaman returned from his third visit to the patent log.
"Two knots, sir!"
The movement of the yacht became slower and slower as it gradually
checked in its sweep through the water. The throbbing of the engines
grew louder as they labored with increasing effort to master the
mysterious Thing that was holding them back.
The boat was barely creeping now. It seemed to be struggling against
some invisible force that gripped gently but relentlessly, some
infinitely patient force that from the very patience of its operation
was the more evidently inexorable.
The engines were working in panic-stricken tempo now. The chief
engineer had given them all the steam they would take, and the
propellers thrashed the water mightily, but the ship slowed, slowed.
At last it was still, while the engines seemed to be trying to rack
themselves to pieces in their terrific attempt to drive the ship
against the Thing that held it back.
The captain watched with a set face, then ordered the engines reversed.
There was an instant's pause, and the propellers took up their
thrashing of the water again. For a moment it seemed that they would
have some effect. The yacht shivered and moved slightly backward, but
then stopped again with the same soft gentleness.
The seamen inspected the water all around the ship with lanterns
lowered to the water's edge. They found nothing. A sounding line was
thrown overboard, and sank for two hundred fathoms without reaching
bottom.
The searchlight played endlessly over the water, trying to find some
turmoil that might indicate the presence of a monster whose tentacles
had fastened upon the ship, but without result. The surface of the
water was like glass.
Again and again the engines struggled mightily to move the ship. Again
and again the propellers beat the water at the stern into froth and
foam, but never did the yacht move by as much as an inch.
The sea was calm and placid. The stars looked down from the moonless
sky and were reflected by the still surface of the water.
The yacht struggled like a living thing to break free from the
mysterious force that held her fast, while all about her there hung
that faintly disgusting odor of slime from the depths of the sea, an
indistinctly musky odor as of something unclean.
At last the wireless began to crackle a frantic appeal for help, giving
the details of what was happening on board the yacht. Hardly had the
message finished when the yacht began to rock slightly, as from a faint
ground swell.
II.
"But, Theodore, old pet," said Davis amiably. "The fact that a plane
won't loop the loop or make nose dives at ninety degrees doesn't make
it hopeless as a battleplane."
He was affectionately expounding the good points of a monster seaplane
drawn up in its hangar by the beach.
Davis wore the insignia of a flight commander of the aviation corps
and the ribbons of half a dozen orders bestowed on him after the
destruction of the Black Flyer, destroyed by Teddy Gerrod and himself
some six months before.
Teddy Gerrod was in civilian clothes, but was earnestly, though
cheerfully, disputing everything his friend said.
"A two-seater like the one we used six months ago," he pointed out,
"could fly rings around this bus of yours, and with a decent shot at
the machine gun could smash it in no time."
"Fly rings around it? Not noticeably," said Davis confidently. "Since
our idea of platinum plating the cylinders everybody's doing it. Using
picro gasoline, as you and I did, we get a hundred and eighty miles an
hour from this 'bus' you're trying to disparage. And, furthermore, if
you try to damage this particular ship with machine-gun bullets you're
going to be disappointed."
"Armor?"
"Precisely. I admit cheerfully that you may know a lot about physics
and cold bombs and liquid gases and such things, but when it comes to
flying machines--my dear chap, you simply aren't there."
Gerrod laughed.
"Perhaps not. But I'd rather dance around in a more lively fashion in a
little two-seater."
"And privately," admitted Davis, "so would I. The next war we have I'm
going to arrange for you to be my machine gunner."
"Delighted," said Gerrod. "But what would Evelyn say?"
He was referring to his wife. Davis waved his hand.
"Oh, she'd say there aren't going to be any more wars."
"That reminds me," said Gerrod. "We want you down for the next weekend.
No other guests."
Davis nodded abstractedly. A messenger was coming over to the hangar at
double time.
"Thanks. I'll be glad to come. Wonder what this chap wants?"
The messenger came up, saluted, and handed Davis a yellow slip. Davis
tore it open and read:
Steam yacht _Marisposita_, Alexander Morrison of New York, owner,
reports position 33°11'N 55°10'W, wants immediate assistance.
Engines and hull perfect condition, not aground, no derelict or
obstacle discoverable. Unable to move any direction. Sea calm. Only
possible explanation has been seized by sea monster. Flt. Comm.
Richard Davis ordered to make reconnaissance of situation in
seaplane. Reported condition considered incredible, but no naval
vessels in immediate vicinity. Flt. Comm. Richard Davis will make
immediate investigation and report.
Davis whistled.
"Here's something pretty!" he remarked. "Take a look."
He handed the order to Gerrod and went quickly to the door leading into
the workshop attached to the hangar.
In a few crisp sentences he had ordered the big plane prepared for an
extended flight, with provisions and as much fuel as it would carry. He
returned to find Gerrod thinking busily.
"May I come along on this trip?"
"It's against regulations, of course," said Davis, "but no one will
kick if _you_ go. You're privileged."
He cried an order or so at the workmen, who were now swarming over the
machine.
Although the wireless message had been sent from the yacht after
nightfall, the sun was barely setting on the coast, where the hangar
was placed.
The vessel in distress was some thirty degrees east of the coast, and
consequently the sun set two hours before it sank on the coastal line.
Gerrod phoned a hasty message to his wife and went to Davis' quarters,
where he borrowed heavy flying clothes from Davis' wardrobe. The
mechanics and helpers worked with desperate haste.
The aëroplane would be flying all night long, but it was desirable that
it take off while there was yet some light. The long fuel tank was
filled, and the motors run some ten or fifteen minutes, while critical
ears listened for the faintest irregularity in their bellowing roar.
Two engineers and a junior pilot were to go with Davis in the big
aircraft, and they were hastily summoned and told to prepare to leave
in as short a time as possible.
It was hardly more than half an hour from the time the telegraphed
order was received before Gerrod preceded Davis up the ladder and into
the inclosed cabin of the seaplane.
The motors were cranked--two men tugging at the blade of each of the
huge propellers--and the plane slid slowly down the ways and into the
water.
Davis maneuvered carefully until he was clear of all possible
entanglements. Then he gave the motors more gas and more. Their harsh
bellow rose to a deafening sound, and the long, boatlike body began to
surge through the waves with gradually increasing speed.
For a few yards the spray blew upon and spattered the glass windows of
the cabin. Then the planes began to exert their lifting power and the
plane began to ride the waves instead of plowing through them.
The speed increased again, and suddenly the shocks of the waves beating
on its under surface ceased. The plane rode upon air with a smooth and
velvety motion that was sure and firm.
Davis rose gradually to five thousand feet and headed accurately to the
east. A southerly wind, reported by wireless from a ship at sea, would
carry him slightly to the south, and the sum of the two motions should
bring him, by dawn, very close to the spot from which the yacht had
sent out her wireless call.
Davis was not pushing the plane to its utmost. He would need light by
which to descend, and had no intention of reaching the spot where the
_Marisposita_ was in distress until dawn.
From their altitude the ocean seemed only a dark, unfathomable mass
below them. The stars twinkled down from the arch of the sky in all
their myriads of sizes and tints.
There was no moon. Those in the closed car of the big seaplane could
only see the star-strewn firmament above them and upon all sides, which
sank down, and abruptly was not.
Save for the cessation of the star clusters, the horizon was invisible.
The sea was obscure and mysterious, like some mighty chasm over which
they flew precariously.
The dark wings of the plane stretched out from the sides of the body
with a mighty sweep. The plane was over a hundred feet across, and with
the powerful motors it possessed was capable of lifting an immense
weight. Even now more than two tons of fuel were contained in the huge
tanks in the tail.
Davis drove steadily on through the night for a long time. His face
was intent and keen. He made little or no attempt to look out of the
windows before him.
His eyes were fixed almost continuously upon the instruments before
him: the altometer, which was a barometer graduated to read in feet and
with means for correcting the indication by barometric readings from
sea level; the inclinometer, which showed the angle at which the plane
was traveling with regard to the earth's surface, and the compass.
The compass was one of the very latest developments of the gyroscopic
compass and showed the true north without regard for magnetic
deviations.
Davis felt out his machine thoroughly and then turned it over to his
junior pilot. The younger man--and to be younger than Davis meant that
he was very young indeed--slipped into the driver's seat, quickly
ascertained the course, speed, and altitude, and settled back to
continue Davis' task, while Davis curled himself up in a chair and went
instantly to sleep.
It was chilly in the car, but Davis slept the sleep of the just,
ignoring the roaring of the motors outside, which was only slightly
muffled by the windows of the car.
Gerrod had gone to sleep some time before, and one of the two engineers
was similarly curled up on the floor of the roomy and comfortable car.
Hours passed, while the big seaplane winged its way steadily through
the night. It roared its way across the vast chasm of the dark ocean
below, an incarnation of energy at which the placid stars looked down
in mild surprise.
The exhausts roared continuously, the stays hummed musically, and the
great wings cut through the air with resistless force.
Within the dark body of the plane three men slept peacefully, one
sat up sleepily, listening to the motors, and prepared to wake into
alertness at the slightest sign of irregularity in the action of any
of them, and one man sat quietly at the controls, his eyes fixed on the
instruments before him, lighted by tiny, hooded electric bulbs.
Course, due east. Altitude, five thousand feet. Speed, one hundred and
fifteen miles. Twice during the night Davis woke and made sure that all
was well.
In leaving the navigation of the machine to his assistant, he was not
throwing the major part of the work on him. The work would come in the
morning, when they found the yacht.
If there were anything in the talk of a sea monster having seized the
yacht, Davis would need to be fresh for the search and possible battle
that would follow.
He was taking the most sensible precaution possible. And, in any event,
he had driven for the first four hours, during which the younger man
had rested.
The first gray light began to appear in the east. The pilot of the
plane had not looked away from his instruments for an hour, and not
until a faint light outside called his attention to the approach of
dawn did he think to glance through the windows.
A dimly white glow was showing as an irregular splotch toward the east.
The pilot saw it and noticed something odd about its appearance, but
did not stop to examine it closely.
He called Davis, as he had been ordered to do. Davis sat up, rubbed his
eyes, and was thoroughly awake.
"All right?" he asked.
The pilot nodded.
"Sunrise," he said. "You said to call you."
"Right you are." Davis stood up and stretched his muscles. "Here,
Teddy, wake up."
Gerrod stirred, and in a moment was awake. Davis deftly prepared coffee
and sandwiches.
"Rescuers like ourselves need to be fed," he observed with a smile. "I
wonder what is actually the matter with that person Morrison?"
"Millionaires are timid folk," Gerrod agreed. "I'll bet we've had a
wild-goose chase."
"Funny, though," said Davis ruminatively. "People don't usually send
out wild wireless messages like that. They probably ran into a big
bunch of seaweed."
He bit into a sandwich. The two engineers, with complete democracy,
were already eating. The man at the controls suddenly uttered an
exclamation.
"What's the matter?" asked Davis quickly.
"Look out the window," said the pilot in a tone indicating that he
could not believe his eyes.
Davis looked, and his month dropped partly open. Before them the white
patch of light had turned golden and then yellow. A bank of clouds lay
before them, behind which the sun was evidently hidden.
That had not caused Davis' exclamation, however. He was not amazed
at anything he saw, but at the lack of something he did not see--the
ocean. The cloud bank was illuminated by the sun. It covered half of
the sky before them, _and below them_!
There was no ocean below them. There was no land below them. Above, the
rapidly graying sky could be seen. Below them was rapidly graving sky!
There was no horizon, there was no land, there was no sea.
There was only sky. They seemed to be alone in an illimitable
firmament, a derelict in open space, adrift in some unthinkable
ether in which there was no landing space or any solid thing except
themselves.
Above them and below them, before them and behind them, on their right
side and their left side was sky, and nothing but sky. There was not
one bit of solid matter visible on either side, ahead or behind, up or
down.
It was as if they had gone aloft, and while they flew the earth had
been destroyed. Only the incredibility of such a catastrophe kept them
from believing it instantly.
"Teddy," said Davis in a moment or two, trying to jest, though his
voice was shaking, "you're our tame scientist. What's happened to our
well-beloved earth? Has it gone off and left us in the lurch? Have we
flown off into space?"
Gerrod was looking with all his eyes. He looked down into a blue bowl
that was the exact counterpart of the dome above.
"Which way is down?" he asked quietly. "Is it that way, or that way?"
He pointed over his head and at his feet. "Are we flying right side up,
or upside down, or what?"
The plane banked sharply and side-slipped for a moment before it
recovered.
"Steady!" said Davis to the man at the controls. "Steady----"
The machine banked again, then shot upward, stalled, and slipped on
again.
"Straighten out!" said Davis sharply. "Up with the joy stick!"
"I don't know what's what," said the white-faced pilot desperately,
obeying as he spoke. "Great God! What's happening now?"
The plane seemed to be standing on its tail, and the three men standing
in the car slid toward the rear. Davis seized a seat and clambered
toward the controls. As he made his way toward the instruments the
plane seemed to go mad.
It twisted, turned, stood upon its head and darted forward, and then
seemed to be wallowing in the air. Davis seized the controls, and with
his eye solely on the inclinometer worked madly for a moment. The plane
stopped its antics and drove on steadily.
"It's like driving in a fog," he said over his shoulder. "All right
back there now?"
"Yes." Gerrod was answering. "What happened?"
"With nothing to tell which was up and which down, we lost our level
and couldn't find it again. I've flown upside down for five minutes,
going through a cloud, and didn't know it until my barometer dropped
upward. We're all right, but what's happened to the earth?"
Gerrod cautiously made his way to a point beside Davis, who was driving
with his eyes glued to the instruments. That incredible vastness into
which the machine seemed to be boring was appalling. They seemed to be
speeding madly from nothingness into nothingness, with nothing below
them and nothing above.
They were alone in a universe of air. Gerrod stared ahead at the cloud
bank behind which the sun seemed to be hiding.
"There's the sun, all right. What's our barometer reading?"
"Eight thousand feet."
"Try dipping, by the inclinometer."
Davis did so. Though there was not the slightest change in the
appearance of the sky that compassed them all about, the barometer
quivered from eight thousand feet to seven, and then to six. Gerrod
suddenly uttered an exclamation:
"The sun's coming out!"
The fiery disk of the sun peered slowly from behind the edge of the
cloud bank.
"There's _another_!"
From the opposite side of the cloud bank a second sun could be seen,
slowly appearing as had the first. The two suns swam away from the
fringe of the cloud and glared at each other.
"I've got it!" Gerrod struck his knee with his hand. "What fools we
are!"
"I'm glad we're only fools," said Davis mildly. "I've been afraid we
had gone mad. What's happened?"
"Why, the water," Gerrod said excitedly, "the water is perfectly calm
and reflects like a mirror. We don't see the sky below us. We see
the reflection of the sky. And that isn't a second sun," he pointed;
"that's the reflection of the sun."
"Only, the water doesn't reflect like that," said Davis. "At least, not
from straight overhead. Open a side window and look directly downward."
Gerrod did so, and exclaimed again:
"I'm right, I tell you! Directly under us I can see the reflection of
our plane, flying upside down."
Davis took a quick glance.
"I guess you are right, after all," he admitted, "but the water doesn't
reflect like that normally. Something queer must have happened." He was
silent a moment, while his eyes swept the distance before them keenly.
"Here's another proof you're right. There's the yacht we're looking
for."
Far away, its white hull turned to red gold by the first rays of the
sun, they saw the yacht, motionless on the water. And in striking
corroboration of Gerrod's hypothesis, they saw every line and every
spar reflected in the water below.
Davis shifted his course to bear for the yacht and dipped down until he
was only five hundred feet above the strange, mirrorlike surface of the
sea. Below them they could see the spreading wings of their seaplane
reflected from the still water.
They swept up to the yacht and circled above it. The junior pilot
unshipped the tiny wireless set of the aëroplane, and it crackled
busily for a few moments.
"All right to alight," he reported. "They say nothing has happened all
night, but they're still unable to move."
The plane swept around the yacht in a wide circle, coming lower and
lower. It was quite impossible to judge where the surface of the water
might be, but Davis kept his eye on the deck of the yacht, to get the
level from that.
At last he made his decision. Being quite unable to tell exactly where
the surface was, he could not land in the usual fashion. He slowed in
mid-air until the machine was moving at the lowest speed at which it
would keep aloft.
Then, by a jerk of the joy stick, he headed it upward at an angle it
was unable to make at that speed. The result was that the machine
stalled precisely like a motor car on an upgrade and, with next to no
headway, "pancaked," sank vertically--downward.
"Sit tight!" he ordered as the plane sank.
Next moment every one of them clutched wildly at the nearest object
to keep himself from falling. The plane had struck the surface, but
instead of skimming forward, as its slight remaining headway made it
try to do, it was brought to a sudden standstill as if by a mighty
brake.
Only a miracle kept it from overturning. Davis opened a window of the
cabin and shouted:
"Throw us a rope and haul us alongside!"
The men on the deck of the yacht heard him, and a rope came hurtling
through the air, to fall across one of the wings. Davis scrambled out
and made it fast. Those on the yacht hauled, but the plane did not
move. Half a dozen men grasped the slender line and threw their united
weight upon it. The rope broke with a snap.
"What the----" exclaimed Davis in astonishment.
A second rope was thrown. The captain of the yacht called from the
bridge:
"Haul a heavy line to you and make that fast!"
Wondering, those on the seaplane obeyed. The sailors on the yacht made
the other end of the stouter line fast to a capstan and manned it.
Slowly and reluctantly the seaplane was drawn toward the white vessel.
It was Gerrod who looked behind them. Where the float of the seaplane
had been he saw a deep depression in the surface of the water, which,
as he watched, slowly filled.
"The sea is turned to jelly!" he exclaimed, and he was right.
They found the truth of the matter when they clambered on board the
yacht. With the morning, the members of the crew were able to make a
more thorough investigation of what had happened.
They lowered boats, and the boats stuck fast. When oars were dipped
into the strangely whitened or silvered water the oars were drawn out
coated with a sticky, silvery mass of a jellylike substance.
From the deck of the yacht the altered appearance of the sea was as
remarkable as from the air. All of the ocean seemed to have been
changed to a semisolid mass of silver.
The horizon had vanished or ended into the sky imperceptibly so it
could not be distinguished. The captain discussed the matter with them.
"I've never seen anything like this before," he said perplexedly. "I've
been on a ship that traveled two hundred miles on a milk sea, but never
anything like this."
"What do you think it is?" asked Davis. "Something on the order of a
milk sea?"
The captain nodded.
"You know a milk sea is caused by a multitude of little animals that
color the water milky white. They're phosphorescent at night. This must
be something on that order, only these cluster together until the water
is made into a jelly. And they have a queer, slimy smell."
"They aren't phosphorescent," said Davis.
"No, of course not."
Nita Morrison had joined the little group. Her father was beside her,
looking rather worried.
"Well," said Nita anxiously, "what's to be done? How are we going to
get the yacht free?"
"I'm afraid we aren't," said Davis, smiling. "The telegraphed orders
that brought me here told me simply to make an examination and make a
report. My plane can't do anything for the yacht, of course."
"Then what----"
"I'll go back and report," Davis explained, "and they'll send boats to
try to get in to you people. There doesn't seem to be any immediate
danger, and at worst you can all be taken off by aëroplane, if we can
rise again from that jelly mess."
Nita wrinkled her small nose.
"I know we aren't in danger," she said, "or at least I know it now, but
are we going to have to stay here and smell that horrid smell until the
government gets ready to rescue us?"
The odor of the jellylike animalcules was far from pleasant. It was an
unclean scent, as of slime dredged from the bottom of the sea.
"Well-l," said Davis thoughtfully, "I dare say we can accommodate two
more people. It isn't quite regular, but that's a detail."
"But the crew?" Morrison looked inquiringly at the captain of the yacht.
"Milk seas always break up, sir," said the captain. "I have no doubt
this silver sea will break up as well. We can wait and see, and at
worst we have our wireless."
"Then it's settled," said Nita joyfully. From sheer gratitude she
smiled at Davis.
"Always providing we can get aloft again," said Davis.
"The propellers of the ship, sir," suggested the captain, "though they
can't move the yacht, yet manage to thrash a fair-sized patch of this
jelly into liquid."
"A good idea," said Davis heartily. "We'll haul the plane around to the
stern, and you'll set your engines running."
In a very little time this was done. The great propellers of the yacht
thrashed mightily, and a narrow patch of open water opened in the
silver sea. The seaplane was laboriously hauled around to the stern of
the yacht, and the party was lowered on board.
With some difficulty the motors were cranked again and the plane
scuttled madly down the lane of water. With a quick jerk of the joy
stick Davis lifted the plane from the water just as the open water
ended and the silver sea began.
The big plane circled in the air, rising steadily as it circled, and
at last headed for the west again, still flying in that incredible
appearance of sky above and sky below, with the reflected sun glaring
upward just as fiercely as the real sun beat down.
III.
Nita sat in the seat beside Davis' control chair, pointing to the
instruments one by one.
"And that's the inclinometer," she repeated, "to tell you the angle at
which the plane is climbing or descending. That's the barometer, which
reads--let me see--seventy-four hundred feet. We're over a mile high,
aren't we?"
"We are," said Davis, "though by the looks of things we are ten
thousand miles from anywhere."
The silver sea was still beneath them, and they still seemed to be
floating in a universe of air. Nita paid no attention.
"And that's the compass dial, and that----What did you call it?"
"An anenometer," said Davis again, smiling. "It's the speedometer of
the air--or the patent log, whichever you like to call it."
"You only have to learn one syllable," said Nita. "They all end in
ometer. It's convenient that they're named like that."
Davis smiled.
"I never thought of that before, but it is convenient."
"But how do you balance the plane?" Nita demanded.
"In straightaway flight it balances itself," Davis explained. "It's one
of the new inherently stable designs. For turning, the wing tips work
automatically. We've a gyroscopic affair that attends to them."
Nita subsided for a moment, then demanded further information.
"What's that lever for? To change speeds?"
Davis laughed.
"Well, no. We haven't but one speed forward and no reverse----"
"You're making fun of me!"
"That's the joy stick," said Davis, chuckling. "We dive and climb with
it. Pull it back and we go up. Push it forward and we dive."
"Mmmmm," said Nita interestedly.
Her father took his cigar out of his mouth long enough to join in
Davis' chuckle at Nita's absorbed air.
"Don't talk to the motorman, Nita," he said. "He may run past a switch."
Nita turned around and smiled at him. The car was rather crowded with
seven people in it. Gerrod was looking curiously at a bit of the
silvery jelly, with which he had filled several pails before leaving
the yacht. He took a bit of it between his thumb and forefinger and
rolled it back and forth speculatively.
It seemed faintly granular to the touch, but at the slightest pressure
underwent a change that felt like crumbling, and was nothing but
watery liquid.
"I'll bet anything you care to name," he said thoughtfully, "that this
is just a mass of little animalcules with little silvery shells. The
silvery shells would account for the reflection we see."
"The captain of my yacht," observed Morrison, "said that he thought it
was like a milk sea. That's a mass of little animals that glow like
phosphorus in the dark."
"Perhaps," said Gerrod meditatively. "I'd like to look at this stuff
under a microscope."
"Oh some of it will go to the government chemists," said Morrison with
a large air, "and they'll figure out a way to kill the little beasts.
There's a cure for everything."
"Perhaps," said Gerrod.
The plane flew on steadily, Davis finding some amusement in gratifying
Nita's suddenly aroused curiosity about every part of the seaplane.
When her curiosity about the plane was satisfied, however, and she
began to make inquiries about himself, Davis was much less comfortable.
He tried to be evasive, but she pinned him down, and was filled with
excitement when she found that he was the same man who, as Lieutenant
Davis, had flown the two-seated flying machine that had destroyed the
Black Flyer and with it Varrhus' menace to the liberty of the world.
She tried very hard indeed to get him to tell her the story of that
fight, but he blushed and said there was nothing to tell. It would
be hard to say to what lengths she would have gone had not something
outside the plane caught her attention.
"There's the horizon!" she exclaimed. "We've come to the edge of the
silver sea, and from here on it's just the plain, good, old-fashioned
ocean."
The line that marked the point where sea and sky joined was indeed
visible, and a gradually widening bank of darker blue showed that the
silver sea had indeed come to an end.
As the seaplane flew onward the darker, wave-tossed ocean came toward
them and passed below, but blended so gradually with the jellied ocean
that it was impossible to tell where the silver sea ended and blue
water began. It was evident that the silver sea was still growing.
Then, for a long time, the seaplane sped onward over the blue waters,
while Nita tried ingeniously to extract from Davis the details of the
fight with the Black Flyer.
Davis was acutely uncomfortable, but nevertheless he felt strangely
disappointed when the dim line of the coast appeared ahead. He hovered
a moment to get his bearings, and then sped northward toward the
aviation station to which he was attached.
Nita, too, seemed disappointed. She had enjoyed tormenting Davis, and
he impressed her very favorably. After the plane had swooped downward
and come to rest on the water a scant two hundred yards from the hangar
in which it was kept, she turned to Davis.
"Well," she announced, "since I haven't been able to make you tell me
what I want to know this time I warn you I shall make you tell me next
time."
Davis smiled.
"May I hope there will be a next time?"
Nita smiled at him.
"I shall be angry if there isn't," she said demurely.
The launch came up to tow them ashore, and Davis was busy for a few
moments, but before Nita and her father climbed into the motor car
they had commandeered to take them to the city he found time to make a
more definite arrangement and learned he was expected to call at the
Morrison mansion "very, very soon."
The description of the silver sea aroused but little attention in the
newspapers. A particularly pathetic murder trial was filling the public
mind, and small paragraphs in obscure corners, describing the plight of
the yacht, contained all that the public learned.
Every one seemed to dismiss the matter as a natural curiosity which
would probably disappear in a little while. An aggregation of tiny
animalcules which had clustered together until they formed a jellylike
mass did not promise much in the way of drama, and our newspapers are
essentially purveyors of drama.
Obscure notices in the shipping news, however, told of the growth of
the silvery patch, and at last there was a ripple of interest caused
by the news that the crew of the yacht claimed that the jellylike
creatures were clambering up the sides of the ship and threatening to
overwhelm the vessel.
Seaplanes put out from shore and took the crew off, and then public
interest lapsed again. An almost uneventful accident to the yacht of a
steamship magnate was good material for society news, but not for the
pages devoted to items of general interest.
To Davis, however, anything pertaining to Nita had become of surpassing
interest. He practically haunted her house, and Nita seemed not at
all unwilling to have him there. Her father was as cordial as Nita
at first, but later began to watch Davis' frequent appearances with
something of disquiet.
Davis was sufficiently well known from his Black Flyer episode to
be considered socially eligible anywhere, but he was far from rich.
He had consistently refused the numerous offers from motion-picture
companies and book publishers to enact or relate his exploits, though
the acceptance of any of those offers would have meant a small fortune.
Davis was instinctively unwilling to commercialize his reputation.
Morrison could find no fault with him personally, but he could not
quite believe that Davis' increasingly evident infatuation for Nita was
real--that he was actually more than a fortune hunter.
The shipping news continued to give sparsely phrased notice of the
location and size of the silver sea. Two naval vessels were assigned to
observe it, reporting regularly to the meteorological bureau.
It must be recorded to the credit of that much-maligned department of
weather forecasts and maritime information that it was probably the
first body to see the possibilities of evil that lay in the silver sea.
It had quantities of the silvery mass of animalcules brought to it
for study, and set its scientists to work to try and find a means of
destroying them. Fish would not eat them. They seemed to possess some
repulsive taste that led all the carnivorous fishes to avoid them
at all costs. Placed in an aquarium with a huge sea bass that was
exceptional for its voracity, the sea bass avoided the tiny, jellylike
mass as it would the plague.
The silver globule of jelly multiplied in size, and still the sea bass
avoided it, retreating to the farthest corners of its tank to keep from
coming in contact with the little animalcules. At last the aquarium was
a shimmering mass of silvery, sticky jelly, and the bass was unable to
retreat farther. It was found gasping out its life outside the tank,
having leaped from the water to escape from the omnipresent silver
menace.
The silver sea grew in size. It began to figure in the news again, when
passengers on the transatlantic liners noticed that the steamers were
taking a route much farther to the north than was customary. It was
admitted at the steamship offices that the detour was made for the
purpose of avoiding, the now vast silver sea.
Late in March people along the eastern coast of the United States began
to remark upon a musklike, slimy smell that was faintly discernible in
the sea breeze. A steamer, going from New York to Bermuda, reported
seeing a patch of the silvery jelly only three hundred miles from
the eastern coast. The disagreeable, musklike smell was strong and
noticeable.
The newspapers woke to the possibilities of the silver sea. Ships could
not navigate in its jellied waters, nor fish swim. It covered thousands
of square miles now, and was growing with an ominous steadiness that
foreboded ill.
The seaside resorts along the Atlantic coast were practically
abandoned. Tourists would not stay where that foul, slimy, musklike
scent was borne to them constantly on the sea breeze. The patches that
were the forerunners of the silver sea itself appeared along the coast.
At last the horizon disappeared.
The silver sea had come close, indeed, to the shore. Then every
newspaper burst into huge headlines. For the different papers they were
phrased differently, but the burden of each, displayed in the largest
possible type, was
COASTAL NAVIGATION STOPPED!
America's Communication With the World Cut Off By Silver
Sea.--Harbor Blocked from Maine to Georgia.--Authorities Helpless
to Fight Silver Menace.
Then the world began to be afraid.
IV.
Davis was unwontedly silent as Gerrod drove him out to the tiny cottage
to which he had been invited.
"Evelyn's expecting you," said Gerrod as the little motor car wound up
a hill between banks of fragrant trees that line the road on either
side. "We rather looked for you last week, but you wired, you know."
"Yes, I know," said Davis gloomily. "I went somewhere else."
Gerrod smiled. Davis was sufficiently his friend to break an engagement
and admit it frankly, and besides Gerrod more than suspected where
Davis had gone.
"How is Miss Morrison?" he asked.
"She's all right," said Davis still more gloomily. "But damn her
father!"
Gerrod raised his eyebrows and said nothing until they arrived at the
cottage with the little built-on laboratory. Evelyn came out at the
sound of the motor and shook hands with Davis.
"We were beginning to be afraid the competition was too much for us,"
she said with a smile.
Davis looked at her and tried to smile in return, but the result was a
dismal failure.
"Oh, I'm glad to be here now," he said dolefully.
Gerrod made a sign to Evelyn not to refer to Nita again until he could
speak to her, and helped Davis carry his two suit cases into the house.
"Your usual room, of course," he said cheerfully. "Dinner is served at
the same hour as before, and you can do just as you please until you
feel like coming down. I'll be in the laboratory."
Davis went heavily upstairs, his usually cheerful face suffused with
gloom. Evelyn glanced at Gerrod.
"What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "Has he quarreled with Nita?"
Gerrod shook his head, smiling.
"I asked about her, and he answered by damning her father. I suspect he
has run against a little paternal opposition."
Evelyn's eyes twinkled and she laughed.
"Best thing in the world for them," she declared. "When he's ripe for
it I'll take a hand. Nita Morrison was a classmate of mine in college
and I know her well enough to help along."
Gerrod chuckled.
"He was like a funeral all the way out. We'll let him alone until he
wants to talk, and then you can advise him all you like. But just now
I want to get back at those small animals that are raising so much
particular Cain."
He went into the laboratory and slipped off his coat. He had a number
of test tubes full of the silvery animalcules and was examining them
under all sorts of test conditions to determine their rate of growth
and multiplication.
He was rather hopeful that he would be able to demonstrate that after
a certain period they would--because of their extremely close packing
together--either die from inability to obtain nourishment or be
poisoned from their own secretions.
He was looking curiously at a phenomenon that always puzzled him when
Davis came into the room. His expression was that of a man utterly
without hope.
"What've you got there?" he asked listlessly.
"Some of our silvery little pets," said Gerrod cheerfully. "I'm
studying them in their native lair. Have you looked at them under a
microscope?"
"No."
Gerrod smeared a bit of the silvery mess on a glass slide and put it
under a microscope. He worked busily for a moment or so, adjusting the
focus, and then waved Davis toward the eyepiece.
"They're funny little beasts. Look them over."
Davis looked uninterestedly, but in a moment even his gloom was
lightened by the interest of the sight he saw. The enlargement of the
microscope was so great that only a few of the tiny animals were
visible, but each of them was clearly and brilliantly outlined.
They were little jellylike creatures, roughly spherical in shape, with
their bodies protected by almost infinitely thin, silicious shells that
possessed a silvery luster. From dozens of holes in the fragile shells
protruded fat, jellylike tentacles that waved and moved restlessly,
forever in search of food.
Under the microscope the shells were partly transparent, and within the
jellylike body inside the shell could be seen a single dark spot.
"That blotch in their shells seems to be the nucleus, or else their
stomach. I can't quite make out if they're one-celled animals like
am[oe]bæ, or if they're really complex creatures."
"Rum little beggars," said Davis without removing his gaze from the
eyepiece. "They're separate animals, anyway. Odd that they should make
a jellylike mass."
"Move the slide about a little," suggested Gerrod. "You'll see how they
do that. You're looking at individuals now. Sometimes--and I think
it's when food gets scarce--they twine their tentacles together and
the tentacles actually seem to join, as if they were welded into one.
In fact, as far as nourishment goes, they do seem to become a single
organism. That's when they're so noticeably jellylike."
Davis watched them curiously for a few moments, and then straightened
up. He moved restlessly about the room.
"The funny thing," said Gerrod cheerfully, ignoring Davis' evident
gloom, "is that they seem to be able to move about. See this test tube?
They've climbed up the sides of the glass until they almost reach the
top."
"I know," said Davis uninterestedly. "When we took the crew off that
yacht, they showed us where the jellylike mass seemed to be slowly
creeping up the sides of the ship. Looked like exaggerated capillary
action."
Gerrod listened with a thoughtful frown.
"I wonder----" he began, but Davis turned to him suddenly.
"Look here, Teddy, I'm in a mess. I want your advice."
Gerrod put down his test tubes and sat on one of the tables in the
laboratory, swinging his legs and preparing to be properly sympathetic
with Davis' plight, which he already knew perfectly well.
"Go ahead."
"It's like this," said Davis reluctantly. "I liked Nita tremendously
the first time I saw her, and she seemed to like me, too. I called on
her, and she seemed to like me better. And I kept on calling. I must
have pretty well infested her house, but she didn't seem to mind it,
you know----"
Gerrod nodded sympathetically.
"I know."
"Well," said Davis savagely, "I found out I was pretty badly gone on
her, and last week I was just getting up the nerve to propose--and I
_know_ she wouldn't have been displeased--when that infernal father of
hers began to interfere."
"He asked you quite pleasantly," said Gerrod with a faint smile,
"exactly why it was that you were coming around so often."
"And I told him," said Davis, suddenly plunged into gloom again. "It
was rather premature, because I hadn't talked to Nita, but I told her
father I wanted to marry her, and I loved her and all that."
"And her father," suggested Gerrod, "asked what your prospects were,
and the rest of it. It takes a millionaire to be really middle class."
"That's what he did," admitted Davis miserably. "I told him my pay
amounted to something, and I had about two or three thousand a year
income from stocks and bonds and such things, and he laughed at me.
Told me how much Nita cost him. Damn it, I don't care about how much
Nita pays for dresses!"
"We men are deuced impractical," said Gerrod with a smile. "But what
was her father's next move?"
"Oh"--Davis looked as if he could weep--"he was polite and all that,
and said how much he liked me and such rot. Then he asked me not to see
Nita again until I was in a position to offer her the things she had
been raised to expect. You see the idea. He put it that he didn't want
Nita to learn to care for me unless it were possible for me to make her
happy and so on. It made me sick."
"I know." Gerrod nodded again. "He practically put you on honor to
preserve Nita's happiness at the cost of your own."
"Damn him, yes!" Davis clenched his fists. "But Nita does care
something about me. I know she does!"
Gerrod watched Davis with eyes from which he had banished every trace
of a twinkle, until Davis had calmed down a little. Then he said
cheerfully:
"Let's go ask Evelyn about it. His late majesty, King Solomon, once
remarked that women should have the wisdom of the serpent, among
other qualifications. We'll see if Evelyn comes up to Solomon's
specifications."
He led the morose Davis out of the room.
* * * * *
The great American public became alarmed and rather resentful when its
harbors were blocked by the silvery jelly. It felt, though, that the
Silver Menace was more of an imposition on the part of mother nature
than anything else.
Passenger traffic with Europe could be maintained by air, and freight
could probably be routed through the far Northern seas to which the
Silver Menace had not yet penetrated. The public considered it an
annoyance, and those who were accustomed to go to the seashore lot
their vacations were disgusted that the mountains would receive them
that summer.
They were quite sure they did not want to go down where that slimy,
disgusting, musklike odor from the stilly, silent silver sea would make
their days unpleasant and the nights unendurable. Fresh fish, too,
became almost prohibitive in price, as the fishing fleets were immured
in the harbors that had now become mirrorlike masses of the disgusting
jelly.
The public resented those things, but was not really afraid. It was not
until nearly a week, after the closing of the harbors had passed that
the world was informed of the Silver Menace's real threat to the human
race, and began to feel little shivers of horror-stricken apprehension
when it looked at the morning papers.
The news was at first passed about in swift, furtive rumors, but half
believed as something too horrible to be credited. The rumors grew,
however, and became more circumstantial, but the newspapers remained
silent.
It is known now that the government had ordered that no hint of the
new danger be allowed to become public, while its scientists worked
night and day to discover a means of combating this silent, relentless
threat that menaced our whole existence. Whispers flew about and became
magnified, but the facts themselves could not be magnified.
At last the government could keep silence no longer, and the world was
informed of the true malignity of the Silver Menace. The silvery jelly
had reached the American coasts, invaded and conquered the harbors, and
was even then rapidly solidifying the rivers, but its threat did not
end there.
Just as it had crept up the sides of Gerrod's test tubes, and as it
had overwhelmed the yacht, now it crept up the beaches. Slowly and
inexorably die slimy masses of jelly crept above the water line.
The beaches were buried below thick blankets of sticky, shimmering
animalcules and still the menace grew.
They overwhelmed all obstacles placed in their path. The whole green,
fertile earth was threatened with burial beneath a mantle of slimy,
silvery, glistening horror!
TO BE CONCLUDED
in the September 15th number of THE THRILL BOOK. Order a copy
from your news dealer at once so you will not miss the end of
this amazing yarn.
CHAPTER V.
Gerrod watched Davis walking hastily down to the little summerhouse,
and laughed.
"Evelyn," he said, still chuckling, "you have truly the wisdom of the
serpent and the gentleness of the dove. Davis falls in love with Nita.
Nita's father forbids Davis the house, and then you resurrect a college
friendship and invite Nita down here so their little romance can be
completed. Why are women so willing to go to so much trouble for mere
men?"
Evelyn slipped her arm in her husband's, and smiled up at him.
"Well-l-l," she said in mock hesitation, "perhaps this time it was
because Davis is so handsome I wanted to keep out of the temptation of
falling in love with him myself."
Gerrod looked after Davis. He had vanished inside the little
vine-covered summerhouse, where Nita was waiting. Evelyn lifted her
lips invitingly, and Gerrod responded to the invitation instantly. Both
of them laughed together.
"As a husband of some six months' standing," said Gerrod with severity,
"I protest against this undignified conduct you encourage me to
continue."
Evelyn rubbed her cheek against his.
"We really ought to be getting back to work on those silly animals,"
she said reluctantly. "It's beginning to look rather serious. It may be
just panic, though."
"Don't believe it." Gerrod was in earnest. "They've covered all the
beaches with their sticky slime, and they're creeping inland. The
rivers are choked with them, and floods are already threatening to
become destructive."
"But it's so silly!" protested Evelyn. "Just because some little
animalcule decides to multiply and keep on multiplying----"
"We have to get to work," finished Gerrod. "Come on into the
laboratory."
They went into their workshop arm in arm. Evelyn and her husband worked
together upon the problems in which they were interested, and indeed
Evelyn was nearly as capable a physicist as was Gerrod. Her suggestions
had helped him immensely when he and Davis battled with the cold
bombs Varrhus had used in his attempt to bring the whole earth under
his sway. Now they were laboring together to try to find a means of
combating the silver menace that threatened the world.
"You're sure there's no exaggeration in the fear that the silver
animals will actually grow up on solid ground?" asked Evelyn as she
slipped into the long white apron that covered her from head to foot.
"Not much chance," said Gerrod, shaking his head. "I went down to
Davis' aviation station last week. They've had to abandon the hangars
nearest the water. The slimy stuff has covered the whole beach and
is still creeping up. The smell is over everything, and the animals
grow and grow. They've reached one of the buildings and crawled up the
sides. They plastered the walls with a thick coating and even covered
the roof. Height doesn't seem to bother them. They'll creep up a
straight wall, and nothing seems to stop them."
"Well, they don't grow very fast," said Evelyn slowly. "There's still
a lot of time left to fight them in."
"Don't believe it. They covered the Atlantic in three months. How long
will they take to cover the continent?"
"You make me shiver," protested Evelyn.
"I'm doing a little shivering myself," said Gerrod grimly. "Every river
in the United States is choked up with them, and they grow upstream
without the least difficulty. They're creeping up the banks of the
streams just as they creep over the beaches. The banks of the Hudson
are a mass of silvery slime that's still expanding."
Evelyn began to look a trifle worried.
"But how far can they go from the rivers--from water?"
"They have gone three miles inland," said Gerrod grimly, "along the
Carolina coast, where the shore slopes down gently to the sea. Up in
Maine there are places where they have only covered a quarter of a
mile. In both places, though, they are still creeping inland."
He picked up one of the test tubes.
"Something must be done to stop them. How does the cauterizing seem to
work?"
"Not at all; it doesn't even make them pause."
Since their discovery that the jelly formation was caused by the tiny
animalcules fusing themselves into one organism, Gerrod had thought
of searing the edge of the silvery mass with a hot flame. The heat
had baked and killed the animalcules for a distance of some two or
three inches into the mass, and he had hoped that by that means
their growth might be stopped. They had simply absorbed the seared
portion into themselves as food, however, and grown on outward as
before. Their means of reproduction made such a proceeding perfectly
possible. Under favorable conditions of moisture and food, each of
the animalcules multiplied itself by as many times as the number of
tentacles it possessed. The animals themselves were tiny, jellylike
creatures incased in a spherical, silicious shell from dozens of holes
in which fat, restless tentacles protruded. Normally the tentacles
provided the microscopic creature with the means of securing its food.
Gerrod had discovered now that it was by those tentacles that they
reproduced. One of the tentacles began to swell and grow a round spot
at the tip. A shimmering, silvery shell appeared around the swollen
portion. Within an hour from the appearance of the shimmer that
showed that the protecting shell had been formed tiny, fat, jellylike
tentacles protruded themselves from openings in the newly formed shell.
With almost incredible rapidity the creature grew to the size of its
single parent. Then the connecting tentacles snapped and a new silvery
animalcule prepared to reproduce in its turn.
"And Davis is just as oblivious of the Silver Menace as if it did not
exist," remarked Gerrod suddenly some time later, apropos of nothing.
Evelyn smiled indulgently and did not answer. She was trying to find
if it were not possible that upon exhaustion of the food supply the
animalcules would attack each other and so destroy themselves. She had
sealed up small quantities of the evil-smelling jelly in test tubes
where they could not possibly find fresh supplies of food. When the
available nourishment was exhausted, however, they simply joined their
tentacles and remained absolutely at rest, their tiny forms immobile.
They did not starve, because they were using up no energy in movement.
She had kept some of them for over a week in just this state of
inactivity, but on being supplied with fresh water they resumed their
interrupted multiplication with feverish energy.
On the beaches the slimy, silvery menace lay in absolute repose.
No tremor of waves disturbed its placidity. The whole sea as far as
the eye could reach was a mass of utterly quiet silver, reflecting
perfectly the cloudless sky. Only at the edges of the mass was
any movement visible, and that movement was a slow but inexorably
sure creeping inland. Whole colonies of houses were garbed in the
glistening, shining horror, and the jellylike stuff filled the roads
between. And over all hung the foul, musklike odor as of slime dredged
up from the bottom of the ocean.
The sun shone down perpetually from a clear blue sky now. Its fierce
heat had dried out the upper surface of the silver sea into a shining
mass like glistening parchment, and the breezes that blew were hot
and dry. There was no longer evaporation from the sea, and the winds
that blew to the shore from the ocean were like blasts from an arid
desert. At night, too, the ocean no longer exerted its former function
of moderator of the climate. The sun's heat was no longer absorbed by
the water by day, to be given up to the breezes again at night. The
winds of the ocean by day were hot, dry, foul-smelling blasts, and at
night were chill and penetrating. Already the crops--which threatened
to be the last ever garnered on the planet--were failing from lack of
rain, and there was no relief in sight. It looked as if that part of
the population which was not overwhelmed by the slimy masses of the
Silver Menace would face death by starvation. Some few enterprising
farmers had gone to the shore and filled wagons with the horrible jelly
to spread on their farms as fertilizer. The whole world knew that the
Silver Menace was simply a mass of microscopic animals, and the farmers
thought they would provide their plants with animal humus by plowing
the glistening stuff underground.
They soon learned their mistake. What little moisture remained in
the earth was absorbed by the greedy animalcules, who multiplied
exceedingly. The farmers learned of their error when they tried to
cross their fields. The ground had become spongy and exuded quantities
of the Silver Menace at every pore. The crops were covered with a
glistening film of the horrible, sticky stuff, which weighted down and
finally buried the green plants under its shining masses.
The mantle of shining horror flowed inland, always inland. It rose
in thick sheets from the now solidified rivers and crept up the
banks, overwhelming everything that came in its way. It clambered up
tall trees, and then dripped down in long, thick ropes from their
branches. Formless things, shining of silver, showed where forests had
come in its way. Gangs of men were working desperately on the docks
of New York, shoveling the ever-climbing masses of slimy mess back
into the Hudson. Already the drains of the city were solid masses of
evil-smelling liquid, and the gutters were choked with their effort to
relieve the streets of the trash that was being deposited upon them.
The hydrants were flushing the streets regularly now, and the fire
and water departments were growing gray in their efforts to keep any
fragment of silvery stuff from reaching the water-supply pipes. If
that occurred the city would be helpless. As it was, the authorities
were beginning to realize that they could not keep up indefinitely
the fights against the ever-encroaching horror, and plans were being
secretly prepared by which the entire population could be shipped away
from the town when the Silver Menace could be fought off no longer.
And all this time, when the government of the greatest city in the
world was recognizing the hopelessness of the city's plight and was
preparing means to abandon the tall skyscrapers to the evil-smelling
slime that would creep upon all the buildings and fill air the streets
with glistening horror; all this time Davis and Nita spent gazing into
each other's eyes, oblivious to everything but each other.
The world breathed a sigh of relief when the government announced
with a fanfare of trumpets that it had found--not a way of destroying
the Silver Menace, but a means of checking it. Tall board fences
would be built and covered with lubricants, with greases, and other
water-resisting substances. The Silver Menace would creep up to them
and be helpless to clamber over them. The world would protect itself
by means of dykes a thousand times more extensive than those of
Holland. Men set to work frantically to build these defenses against
the creeping silver flood. Five hundred miles of fencing was completed
within a week, and ten thousand men increased the force of laborers
day by day. Men stood behind these bulwarks and watched the slowly
approaching silver tide. It crept up to the base of the oily, greasy
boarding. It checked a moment.
Then it slowly and inexorably began to climb them. The lubricants were
_absorbed as food by the microscopic animals, who flowed over the tall
defenses and resumed their slow advance over the whole earth_!
CHAPTER VI.
Davis smiled expansively and idiotically as he looked across the dinner
table at Nita. Gerrod and Evelyn tried to join in his happiness, but
they were both worried over the ever-increasing threat of the Silver
Menace. The government's tall dykes had proven useless, and even then
there were creeping sheets of the sticky slime expanding over the whole
countryside. Davis and Nita, however, were utterly uninterested in such
things. They gazed upon each other and smiled, and smiled. Evelyn
looked at them indulgently, but Gerrod began to be faintly irritated
at their absorption in each other when the world was threatened with
suffocation under a blanket of slimy horror.
"It is indeed wonderful," he said with a quizzical smile, "that you two
have decided to marry each other, but has it occurred to either of you
that there is quite an important problem confronting the world?"
"Yes," said Davis quite seriously. "Nita's father has to be placated
before we can marry."
"Please!" said Gerrod in a vexed tone. "Please stop looking at each
other for one instant. I know how it feels. Evelyn and I indulge even
at this late date, but for Heaven's sake think of something besides
yourselves for a moment."
"Oh, you mean the silver stuff," said Nita casually. "Daddy has offered
a huge reward to any one who can fight it successfully. He and half a
dozen other steamship men put together and made up a purse. About two
millions, I believe."
Davis was looking at her, paying but little attention to what she was
saying, simply absorbed in looking. Gerrod saw his expression.
"Don't you _ever_ use your head?" he demanded. "Here you are worrying
about Nita's father, and there you have a reward offered that would
clear away all his objections at once."
"Why--why, that's an idea!" said Davis.
"Glad you think so," said Gerrod acridly. "Suppose you two talk things
over. You have a brain, Davis, even if you rarely use it."
Davis laughed good-naturedly.
After dinner Evelyn and her husband retired to the laboratory again.
Neither of them wanted to waste any time that might be useful in
developing a means of fighting the Silver Menace. They were deep in
their work when Davis and Nita rushed in upon them.
"We've got it!" said Davis dramatically.
Nita was clinging to his arm, and looked immensely proud of him.
"What have you?" asked Gerrod practically.
"A way to clear off the Silver Menace," said Davis. "You know the
animalcules have very fragile little shells. In the war we had to
fight submarines with armored shells. We got the subs with depth bombs
dropped near them. The concussion smashed them up. Now let's take bombs
and drop them in the silver sea. The concussion will wreck the little
shells for miles around."
Gerrod thought the idea, over carefully.
"It might turn the trick," he said thoughtfully.
Davis beamed.
"We'll try it at once," he said enthusiastically. "Or, rather, we'll
start first thing in the morning. We must have light to experiment by.
I'll phone the aviation field at once to have the big plane ready."
"I'm going, too," said Nita determinedly.
"We'll all go," said Davis expansively.
The plane left the ground shortly after daybreak. It was a curious
sight to see the absolutely cloudless sunrise. The sky paled to the
east, then glowed fiercely red, lightened to orange and the sun rolled
up above the horizon. The big airship circled grandly until it had
reached a height of nearly ten thousand feet, then swung for the east
and sped away.
Nita sat in the seat beside the pilot, her face flushed with
excitement. Gerrod and Evelyn occupied seats farther back, and the
single engineer leaned against the rear of the car, where he could
keep both ears open to the roar of his engines. The twin bomb racks
along the outside of the car were filled with long, pear-shaped,
high-explosive missiles, and the electric releasing switches were close
beside Davis' hand. A case of hand grenades was carefully packed in the
car, too.
The plane passed over green fields far below, with strangely still
and shining streams and rivers winding in and out. From the banks
of most of those streams glistening blankets of a silvery texture
spread slowly and inexorably over the surrounding fields. Before them
they saw what appeared to be the end of the world. Green fields and
luxuriantly foliated forests gave place to a field of shining silver,
which undulated and clumsily followed the conformation of the land and
objects it had overwhelmed. Here one saw ungainly humps that seemed
made of burnished metal. The rounded contours told that great trees
had succumbed to the viscid mass of animalcules. There was a group of
more angular forms with gaping black orifices in their glittering sides
told of a village that had been abandoned to the creeping horror. The
open windows of the houses yawned black and amazed, though now and then
thick stalactites hung pendulously across their openings.
Above all these the big plane sped. It swept on toward the open sea--or
what had been the open sea until the Silver Menace had appeared. Soon
the shore was left behind, and the huge aëroplane was flying between
the two skies--the real sky above and the reflected sky below. Only
a thin line from far inland showed dark. All the rest seemed but a
universe of air without a horizon or any sign of tangibility. Davis
kept his eyes on his instruments, and presently announced:
"I think we're far enough out. We'll drop our first bomb here."
He pressed the release switch as he spoke. The plane lifted a little
as the heavy bomb dropped. For a few seconds there was no sound but
the roaring of the motors, but then the reverberation of the explosion
below reached them.
"Take a look below," said Davis, banking the machine sharply and
beginning to swing in a narrow circle.
Gerrod looked down. He saw what seemed to be a ring of yellowish smoke,
and a dark-blue spot in the middle of the silvery mass beneath them.
"It did something," he reported, "There's a dark spot on the surface. I
can't judge how large it is, though."
Davis released a second bomb, and a third. Gerrod could watch them as
they fell. They dwindled from winged, pear-shaped objects to dots. Then
there was a flash far below and a spurting of water and spray. In a
moment that had subsided, and he saw a second and larger dark-blue spot
beside the first.
"I believe you've done it," said Gerrod excitedly. "You've certainly
destroyed the silvery appearance. Dare you go lower?"
"Surely," said Davis cheerfully. The plane dived like an arrow, and
flattened out barely five hundred feet above the surface.
Gerrod examined the dark spots through glasses. The disturbance had not
completely abated, and he could see indubitable waves still radiating
from the Spot where the bombs had fallen. Davis grinned like a boy when
Gerrod told him.
"We'll land in the open space and make sure," he said suddenly, and the
plane dived again.
Before Gerrod could protest they were just skimming the surface of
the silver sea. The plane settled gently into the now liquid spot of
ocean, and Davis shut off the motors. The occupants of the cabin looked
eagerly out of the windows. All about them, in a space perhaps sixty
or seventy yards across, the water was yellowed and oily, but was
certainly water, and not the horrible, jellylike stuff the world had
so much cause to fear. The concussion from the high-explosive bomb had
shattered the fragile shells of the silver animalcules, and, with their
protection gone, they had relapsed into liquid. At the edge of that
space, however, the silver-sea began again, as placid and malignant as
before.
The plane floated lightly on the surface while the little party
congratulated itself.
"It works," said Davis proudly. Nita squeezed his hand ecstatically.
"I knew he'd think of something," she announced cheerfully.
Evelyn and Gerrod were estimating the area of cleared water with
gradually lengthening faces.
"Let's see how much space a hand grenade clears," suggested Evelyn
thoughtfully.
Davis opened the case and took out one of the wicked little bombs. He
wriggled through a window and out on the massive lower plane of the
flying boat. Balancing himself carefully, he flung the grenade some
sixty yards into the untouched silver sea. It burst with a cracking
detonation and amid a fountain of spume and spray. The four of them
eyed the resultant area of clear water.
"How wide do you suppose that is?" asked Gerrod rather depressedly.
"Ten--no, fifteen yards by fifteen."
So excited were they all that they did not notice a phenomenon that
began almost instantly. The tiny animalcules that formed the silver
sea reproduced rapidly when given merely moisture. Here they had that
moisture, and, in addition, the bodies of all their dead comrades
to feed upon. The conditions were ideal for nearly instantaneous
reproduction. As a result the waves from the high-explosive bombs had
hardly subsided when the open space began, almost imperceptibly, to be
closed by fresh masses of the Silver Menace. The open space became
covered with a thin film which became thicker--thicker----
"And how much explosive was in that grenade?"
"Two ounces of TNT." Davis began to catch the drift of the questions,
and his happy expression was beginning to fade away.
"Two ounces of TNT cleared up roughly a hundred and fifty square yards
of silver sea. That's, say, seventy-five square yards to the ounce of
high explosive." Evelyn was working rapidly with her pencil. "That
works out--five hundred pounds of TNT needed to clear a square mile of
the Silver Menace. We have fifteen hundred miles of coast that has been
invaded to an average depth of at least five miles."
Gerrod took up the calculations with a dismal face. His pencil moved
quickly for a moment or so.
"We'd need over eighteen hundred tons of TNT to clear our coasts," he
said dolefully. "That wouldn't touch the silver sea itself or keep it
from growing again. It grew inland those five miles in two weeks at
most. That's nine hundred tons a week needed to hold our own without
attacking the silver sea at all. We'd have to have forty-six thousand
tons a year to _hold_ it, let alone go after the beasts out here, and
in the meantime we'll have no rain, consequently no crops. It's a
cheerful outlook."
They had been oblivious of what was happening immediately about the
seaplane.
Nita first saw the danger.
"Look!" she gasped.
They had been too much absorbed in gloomy thoughts to notice their
predicament. The open space in which they had landed was now a shining,
glittering mass of the Silver Menace. But what Nita pointed to was of
more imminent danger. The sticky, horrible mass was creeping up the
float on which the seaplane rode and up the smaller floats at the ends
of the wings. Tons of the silver horror had already accumulated upon
the under surface of the great planes and weighted down the aëroplane
until it was impossible for it to rise in the air. And it continued to
creep up and over the body. In a little while the seaplane would be
overwhelmed by the viscid, evil-smelling, deadly little animalcules.
CHAPTER VII.
Shining slime crawled up the small floats at the ends of the lower
wing. It crept along the under surface, and then dripped in thick ropes
down to the surface below. When contact was established the ropes grew
fat and wider, until they were like shining columns from the silver sea
to the now heavily weighted plane. The disgusting stuff crept over the
edges of the lower plane, and began to spread over its upper surface.
Other masses began to creep up the struts that separated the lower
plane from the top.
The three men began to work like mad. They tore strips from the roof
of the cabin and began feverishly to scrape off and thrust away the
insistently advancing enemy. The plane was a large one, however, and
no sooner had they scraped clear one portion of the plane than another
portion was covered even more thickly than the first. The cabin itself
began to be attacked. Its lower portion already glistened like metal,
and in a little while the silvery film began to cover the glass of the
windows. Nita began to be frightened. Parts of the roof had been torn
away to provide the three men--Davis, Gerrod, and the engineer--with
the means of fighting the creeping horror. When the slime reached the
roof and began, to pour down the opening there, the whole cabin would
become a terrible, suffocating tank of the horrible stuff. Evelyn spoke
quietly, though with a white face.
"If you start the motors the wind from the propellers may blow the
jelly away from the cabin."
The engineer leaped to one of the propellers and swung his weight upon
it. The engine turned sluggishly, and then coughed. A second desperate
heave. The motor began to run with a roar. The surface of the slime
on which the blast of wind beat shivered, and then reluctantly began
to retreat. The second motor burst into bellowing activity. The whole
plane began to shiver and tremble from the efforts of the powerful
engines to draw it forward, but the jelly in which it was gripped still
held it fast. The three men redoubled their efforts, and now some faint
result began to show. Hampered by the vibrations which strove to shake
it off, the Silver Menace advanced less rapidly. In half an hour the
upper surface of the plane was nearly free. There was nearly a solid
wall of silver horror connecting its under portion with the jellied
ocean below.
Davis came to the cabin window, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
"There's only one chance," he shouted above the roar of the engines.
"I've got to fling hand grenades into the sea just ahead of us. They
may clear a way for us to rise."
Nita silently began to pass him up the small but deadly missiles. Her
face was set and utterly pale, but she was rising to the emergency with
spirit.
An explosion sounded fifty yards away. Another thirty yards away. A
third but twenty yards away, and the plane heaved and leaped from the
concussion. The blast of air nearly blew the three men from the wings
into the waiting mass of animalcules. A huge volume of ill-smelling
spume was cast upon the plane, and by its velocity washed away a great
portion of the Silver Menace that still clung to it. The propellers
dragged at the plane, and it suddenly darted forward down the narrow
lane of open water cleared by the three explosions. All three of the
men were clinging to struts out on the plane and there was no one at
the controls, but Nita bravely grasped the joy stick, and as the end of
the open water drew rapidly near she jerked it backward with an inward
prayer. The plane lifted sluggishly, scraped the top of the silver sea,
and rose. With an inexperienced pilot at the wheel, with the three men
precariously balanced on the wings, it headed straight for the broadest
part of the Atlantic.
The motors roared as the plane continued to rise. Nita was white-faced
and frightened, but Davis' life was depending upon her. With an amazing
coolness, despite the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her,
she swung the steering wheel as she had seen Davis do. The plane turned
in a wide half circle and headed for the shore again, still rising.
Davis, out on the wing, took a desperate chance. He motioned wildly to
Evelyn, who flung wide the side window. Then, diving as in a football
game, Davis flung himself for the opening. His hands caught in the
frame and he drew himself inside. As he laid his hands on the controls
Nita incontinently fainted, but Evelyn was there to attend to her,
and Davis sped for home at the topmost speed of which the plane was
capable, the other two men still clinging to the struts far out on the
wings.
* * * * *
Alexander Morrison, steamship magnate and many times a millionaire,
looked helplessly from the window of his library. His daughter, Nita,
was visiting Evelyn Gerrod, a college classmate, and there was no one
to sympathise with him in his misfortune. He faced absolute ruin. The
whole world faced death, but that did not impress Morrison as much as
the absolute financial disaster that had come upon him. His ships, at
their docks, were useless and already incrusted with the silvery slime
that threatened the whole earth. His whole fortune was invested in
those vessels. When the government had thrown up its hands over the
problem of checking the invasion of the Silver Menace, far less of
clearing the seas again, Morrison had gone hopelessly to his little
country home on one of the infrequent islands of the Hudson. It was a
high and rocky little island, and his house was built upon the top of
its single peak. He could look out upon the now solid Hudson and see
miles and miles of the silver, evil-smelling jelly.
A little bridge connected the island with the mainland, to which a
well-made, winding road led down. Morrison stared through his closed
library window--closed to keep out the slimy, disgusting odor of the
Silver Menace--and cursed the microscopic animals that had ruined all
commerce and now threatened to destroy humanity. Of all his great fleet
but two of the smallest vessels remained afloat. They were high up in
northern seas, still unvisited by the jellylike animalcules. Where his
tramp steamers and passenger lines had visited nearly every port upon
the globe, now two small ships plied between Greenland and the most
northern part of the American continent.
The silvery jelly was clambering up the rocky shores of his little
island, but beyond cursing it Morrison paid no attention. He was
absorbed in his misfortune, utterly preoccupied with the calamity
that had overwhelmed him. For two days he moved restlessly about his
house, smoking innumerable cigars, eating hardly anything, thinking of
nothing but the extent of the disaster to his fortune. He had offered
half a million dollars to whoever developed a successful means of
combating the Silver Menace. Other men whose wealth, like his own, was
solely invested in ocean transportation had joined him in offering
rewards, until now a purse of two and a half millions awaited the
successful inventor. Multitudes of freak proposals had been made, the
majority of them suggesting that sea gulls be trained to eat the silver
animalcules, or that fish be bred in large numbers to consume them. In
practice, of course, neither fish or birds would touch the disgusting
jelly. The arctic seas were teeming with practically all the fish from
the Atlantic Ocean. For once the Eskimos had no difficulty in securing
enough to eat. The inhabitants of the seas in which the Silver Menace
had appeared, without exception, fled from its sticky masses.
Morrison remained shut up in his house, sunk in despondency and gloom,
while the silvery jelly crept up the shores of his little island slowly
but surely, higher and higher day by day. His butler came to him with a
white face.
"Mr. Morrison, sir," said the butler hesitatingly, "the gardener says,
sir, that that there silver stuff is creepin' up higher, sir."
"All right, let it creep!" snapped Morrison angrily.
"But, sir," ventured the butler once more, "it's creepin' up on the
bridge."
"Have it shoveled down again," said Morrison irritably. "Don't bother
me."
The butler went out of the room, and ten minutes later the two
gardeners went down to the bridge with shovels. They scraped and
shoveled industriously, and when darkness fell the bridge was clear.
But next morning showed the bridge a mass of shining silver, and not
only the bridge, but fifty or a hundred yards of the roadway and turf
leading up to it. The animalcules had come upon the green grass and
it had been used for food, so that they were multiplying rapidly. The
creeping movement of the silvery tide could be distinctly seen. The
butler came to Morrison in a panic.
"Oh, Mr. Morrison, sir," he said tremulously, "the bridge is covered
again and the horrible stuff is coming up to the house. You can see it
move, sir. We'll all be suffocated when it catches us, sir."
Morrison shook his head impatiently.
"Don't bother me."
The butler was trembling fitfully, "Beg pardon, sir, but the men says
as they won't stay no longer, and they're going to try to get over the
bridge to the mainland, sir."
"Very well, let them."
The butler left the room. Presently Morrison heard an uproar outside.
The butler was protesting at the top of his voice against something.
Morrison went out to see what was the matter. Even his indifference
was penetrated by the sight he saw. The silvery slime had crept up
to a point but a hundred yards from the house, and was still slowly
advancing. Half a dozen servants were bringing out one of Morrison's
cars, and were evidently planning to make a dash in it, despite the
efforts of the butler to hold them back. Morrison stepped forward.
"Wait a moment, James," he said quietly. "Let the men have the car,
but it would be better for one to make the attempt first. There's no
use all risking their lives until we know whether there's a chance of
success."
His chauffeur was hastily tuning up a motor cycle.
"I'll make a try, sir," he said grimly. "I'll circle the house once or
twice until I get up speed, and then shoot for the bridge. I think I'll
make it."
Morrison nodded. The motor cycle caught and began to run. The chauffeur
circled the lawn once--twice. His machine was running at a terrific
speed. He came around the third time, swung on the handlebars, and
shot straight for the bridge. The silvery slime shot away from his
front wheels in twin waves as he cut through the mass. The throttle
was wide open and the engine worked manfully. Straight for the bridge
he went, plowing through the thick, sticky mass. Then the accumulated
volume of jelly before him broke down the impetus of his cycle. In
spite of all he could do it slowed down, down. It tottered weakly and
fell. The chauffeur leaped from it and plunged forward. He slipped
and fell, then struggled to his feet again. Five feet more, ten feet
more. He was like an animated statue of burnished metal. Thick ropes
of silver clung to him as he struggled forward. No man could keep up
such exertions. He labored with almost insane force, but his progress
became slower and slower. At last he moved forward no more, but still
straggled weakly. Then he toppled gently from his feet. The slime
covered him silently and placidly. The watchers gasped. The silver tide
grew slowly toward the house.
CHAPTER VIII.
Nita was clinging to Davis' hand as they drove out to the Gerrods'
cottage again. Traces of her fright still lingered on her face,
and Davis' hand was comforting. Gerrod and Evelyn were silent and
discouraged. The only really promising plan for fighting the Silver
Menace had proven so ineffectual as to be practically useless. In
silence the little motor car wound along the twisting road to the
little cottage.
All of them were quiet, even gloomy, as they sat down to lunch. Evelyn
tried to talk lightly, but conversation lagged in spite of her efforts.
The maid brought in their dishes and removed others without a sound.
None of them could eat more than a very little.
When the meal was finished Gerrod and Evelyn went out on the porch
to discuss gravely the chances, even now, of producing the explosive
needed to hold back the Silver Menace. The almost instantaneous
reproduction that had taken place over the cleared area at sea,
however, made it evident that nine hundred tons of explosive would
be needed, not every week, but every day. All the factories in the
country, working at their highest speed, could not supply the quantity
necessary.
Davis went into the laboratory and brought out one of the silvery test
tubes of animalcules.
"Nita," he said mournfully, "I've fought Germans and come out on top.
Gerrod and I fought Varrhus and won out. But these infernal little
animals, so small I have to take a microscope to see them, seem to have
me beaten."
Nita's soft hand crept up and snuggled inside Davis' larger one.
"No, they haven't, either," she insisted stoutly. "You'll think of
something yet."
Davis sighed.
"And it would be so perfect if we could be the ones to find out how to
beat them," he said dolefully. "That would satisfy your father, and
we'd have nothing else to worry about."
Nita looked up into his solemn face, and, in spite of herself, laughed.
"You're worrying too much," she announced. "We're going to take a
vacation and go into the music room and I'm going to play soft music
that will take your mind off your troubles."
She led him into the tiny music room of the bungalow, and sat down at
the small grand piano there.
"You can turn over the music for me," she said gravely as she made room
for him on the seat before the keyboard.
There was no music on the rack of the piano, but neither of them
thought of that. Davis set down the test tube he had brought with him
and prepared to listen. Nita quite forgot to play any recognizable
melody, too. Davis thoughtlessly took possession of her left hand, so
she idly struck chords with her right, while the two of them talked
foolishnesses that were very delightful. They spoke in low tones, and
their voices were soft. They were having an amazingly pleasant time.
They heard footsteps on the porch, and self-consciously drew apart.
Gerrod and Evelyn were coming indoors to go back into the laboratory to
work on wearily in hopes of stumbling on something that might have an
effect upon the ever-encroaching Silver Menace. Davis hastily picked up
the test tube full of animalcules. As he took it in his hands, however,
he uttered an exclamation of astonishment. The contents were no longer
silvery! The tube was full of water with a faintly yellowish tinge.
Davis' jaw dropped.
"People!" he called hastily. "Come here! Something has happened!"
Gerrod and Evelyn appeared in the doorway.
"What's the matter?"
"Something's happened to these little beasts." Davis held out the test
tube. "Twenty minutes ago this was full of the silver stuff. I put it
down on the sounding board here and now they're smashed up and dead!"
Gerrod looked at the tube intently.
"Where was it?"
Davis showed him. Gerrod put one hand on the spot and struck a chord
tentatively. His expression changed from weariness to hope.
"Wait a minute!" he exclaimed, and darted into the laboratory, to
return a moment later with half a dozen test tubes full of the sticky
animalcules. "We'll put another one there and strike a chord."
He did so. The contents of the test tube remained unchanged. He struck
another. Still no change. Then, deliberately striking one key after
the other, with the eyes of all four of them fixed hopefully on the
test tube, he began to go up the keyboard. Note after note was struck,
but just as they were about to give up hopes of finding the cause of
the first tube's clearing Gerrod struck a key--the _F_ above high _C_.
The instant the shrill note sounded out the test tube clouded--and was
clear! It had lain upon the sounding board of the piano. The vibrations
of the piano string had been communicated to it through the sounding
board.
"_Done!_" shouted Davis at the top of his voice.
Nita was speechless.
"Sympathetic vibrations," said Gerrod happily. "If you could hang up
one of those microscopic shells and ring it it would ring that note.
So, when the vibrations from the piano strike them, they vibrate in
sympathy, only the piano vibrations are so strong and the shells so
fragile that they rack themselves to bits, and the animals are killed.
Whee! Hurray! Hurray!"
He shook hands all around, hardly, able to contain his excitement.
"But I say," said Davis anxiously, "will those vibrations travel
through water, and can we put a piano overboard?"
Gerrod laughed.
"We'll put a submarine siren overboard," he said excitedly, "and tune
it to that note. You can hear a submarine siren for fifteen miles with
an under-water telephone. Man, you've done the trick!"
The maid appeared in the doorway.
"Some one on the telephone for Miss Morrison."
Nita reluctantly left the room where the others were chattering
excitedly. She went to the telephone and put the receiver to her ear,
still unconsciously trying to catch the words of the party in the music
room. Almost the first words she heard drove them from her mind,
however. Her father was speaking.
"Nita," he was saying coolly, "this is your father. I'm marooned in the
house on the island, and the Silver Menace is climbing up the walls.
The windows are blocked. I'm expecting them to break in any minute.
When they do I'm done."
"Daddy!" Nita choked, aghast.
"Simmons, the chauffeur, tried to get across the bridge this morning,"
said her father still more coolly, "and the sticky stuff got him. The
room I'm in is dark. The Silver Menace has climbed up to the roof.
We've stopped up the chimney so it can't come down to get us, but when
the house is completely covered we'll be in an air-tight case that will
suffocate us sooner or later. I'm rather hoping the windows will break
in before that time. I'd rather die like Simmons this morning."
"But, daddy, daddy, hold on! We'll come to you----"
"It can't be done," her father interrupted crisply. "I called you
to say good-by and to tell you to look after the families of the
servants that are fastened up here with me." He paused a moment, and
said quietly: "I'm in the library downstairs. I can hear the windows
creaking. They may give way at any moment and let the horror into the
house. It tried to creep in under the doorsills, but we calked them
with the table linen."
"Daddy!" cried Nita agonizedly. "Oh, daddy, try to fight it off just a
little while! We've found a way to stop it! We can kill them all!"
"I have about ten minutes more, Nita," said her father gently. "You
couldn't get to me. Be a good girl, Nita----" There was a crash. "There
go the windows! Good-by, Nita, good-by----"
The others heard her cry out, and rushed from the music room to hear
her calling, calling desperately for her father to answer her, calling
into a silent phone.
CHAPTER IX.
Davis pounded mightily upon the great gate of the half-deserted
shipyard. Behind him, Nita was sobbing in spite of her efforts to hold
back her tears. Evelyn tried her best to calm Nita, but without real
effect. Gerrod had shot the party out at the gate of the shipyard
and darted off in the little motor car on some mysterious errand.
Davis pounded again wrathfully, using a huge stone to make his blows
reverberate through the yard. A workman came slowly toward them.
"Hurry! Hurry!" Nita called tearfully. "Please hurry!"
The workman recognized her through the palings. All of Morrison's
employees knew his daughter. The workman broke into a run. The gate
swung open.
"Where's Mr. Keeling, the manager?" demanded Nita urgently. "We must
see him at once."
The workman pointed, and the three of them hurried as fast as they
could walk toward the man he had indicated.
"Mr. Keeling," said Nita desperately. "Father is marooned in our house
up the Hudson. He may be dead by now. We've got to get to him!"
"I don't know how----" began the manager helplessly.
"I want a submarine siren," said Davis crisply. "One that can be tuned
to different notes. Also the fastest motor boat you have. Give the
necessary orders at once."
"But the Silver Menace----" began the manager again.
"Don't stand there talking," barked Davis in a tone that secured
instant obedience. "Get the siren and the boat. And hurry! This is life
and death!"
Galvanized into action, but still confused, the manager gave the
orders. A fast motor boat that had been hauled ashore and pot into a
shed when the Silver Menace blocked the river was hauled out. A heavy
submarine siren was hastily unearthed from one of the workshops, and
Davis drove the workmen to the task of fitting a sling on the boat by
which the siren could be lowered over the bow. A heavy crane was run
up and the motor boat made fast, in readiness to be lifted overboard.
Every one worked with the utmost speed of which they were capable.
Davis was not his usual good-natured self now. He drove his workmen
mercilessly. Hardly had the last of their preparations been completed
when a heavy truck rumbled into the yard. Gerrod had commandeered the
truck and worked wonders. A grand piano had been lifted bodily into
the big automobile. As the truck stopped he was lifting the lid that
protected the keys. An electrician stood by the siren, with the tuning
apparatus exposed. Hardly had the engine of the truck been shut off
when they were busy tuning the blast of the siren to match the tinkling
sound of the piano. It took a heart-breakingly long time to get the
pitches precisely alike, but then the launch swung high in the air and
alighted on the surface of the jelly below. The electrician in the
launch pressed the button that would set the siren at work sending out
its blast of sound waves through the water.
Those on the bank watched in agonized apprehension. The siren sank
into the jelly like mass. No audible sound issued from it, once it was
submerged, but when the curious sound waves issued into the water from
the giant metal plate that in normal times carried warnings to ships
at sea a change was visible in the jelly. Where ever the curious water
sound traveled the silvery jelly clouded and abruptly turned to liquid!
Almost instantly the space between the two wharves, in which the
launch lay, was free of the horrible stuff. Gerrod shouted excitedly.
Davis swore happily. Nita pushed anxiously forward.
"We've got to get to daddy!" she cried desperately. "We mustn't waste a
second! Not an instant!"
The four of them piled into the launch. An engineer leaped down and
twisted the motor. The fast launch shot forward, the submarine siren
at the bow sending out its strange water sound that was inaudible to
those on board, but which had such an amazing effect on the microscopic
animals that composed the silver sea. As the launch gathered speed and
headed up the Hudson a high bow wave spread out on either side. The
water on which they rode was yellowed and malodorous, but it was water,
and not the silvery, slime that had threatened the world. The Silver
Menace vanished before the launch as if by magic. When the motor boat
approached, with its siren still sounding fiercely, though inaudibly,
the jellied surface of the river shivered into yellowed liquid, and the
creeping horror on the banks trembled and became a torrent of water
that flowed eagerly back into the bed of the stream.
The island on which Morrison had been marooned loomed up ahead,
looking like a small mountain of silver. The house at its top was as a
monument of shining metal. But as the boat sped toward it the silvery
appearance of the coating clouded and melted away. Instead a torrent
of evil-smelling water poured down the sloping sides of the island and
into the river again!
They found the servants weeping for joy. Morrison, when the windows of
the library had broken in under the weight of the mass of the horror
outside, had leaped through the door of the library and slammed the
door behind him. They had calked the cracks with cloth, and for a
moment isolated the Silver Menace in that one room. As window after
window broke in, however, they had been forced to withdraw from room to
room, until at last they were huddled together in a tiny linen closet,
windowless and without ventilation. They were waiting there for death
when they heard the rushing of water all about them and found the
Silver Menace, silver and a menace no longer, flowing down to rejoin
the waters from which it had come.
As is the way of women, Nita, having sobbed heartbrokenly for sorrow
when she believed her father dead, now sobbed even more heartbrokenly
for joy at finding him alive, but she did not neglect, after a
reasonable interval, to bring Davis forward.
"You know him, daddy," she said, smiling. "Well, he is the person who
found the way to destroy the Silver Menace, and so he's the person you
are going to pay that big reward to."
Morrison shook hands with Davis. He knew what was coming next.
"And though it hasn't anything to do with the other things," Nita said
proudly, "he's the person I'm going to marry."
"It would be ungracious," observed Morrison, "to disagree with you. Mr.
Davis, you are a lucky man."
"I know it," said Davis, laughing in some embarrassment. He looked at
Nita, who dimpled at him, and was promptly and frankly kissed for her
daring. She did not seem to mind, however. In fact, she dimpled again.
* * * * *
The last vestige of the Silver Menace was turned to yellowed water
within a month. Submarine sirens, carefully tuned to precisely the
pitch that would cause the tiny shells to shatter themselves, were
hastily set aboard huge numbers of fast steamers, that swept the ocean
in patrols, clearing the sea as they went. Whenever the clear note was
poured out by one of the under-water sirens the silvery animalcules
died in their myriads. Slowly, as the evil smell of their bodies
dissipated, the inhabitants of the Atlantic Ocean came back to their
normal haunts. By shoals and schools, by swarms and in tribes, the
fishes came down again from the North. A week after the destroying
steamers began their patrol rain fell on the Atlantic coast. The
abnormally dry air above the ocean took up water avidly and poured it
down on the parched earth with a free hand. The ocean, too, took up
again its former function of furnishing cool breezes during the day
and warm breezes at night. The seashore became once more a place of
charm and delight. At least Davis and Nita found it so. Davis was being
waited upon with decorations and honorary degrees, with the freedom of
cities and medals of honor from learned societies. At each presentation
solemn speeches were made in which he was told how superlatively clever
he was. Remembering the purely accidental nature of his discovery, he
found it difficult to keep from laughing. These things were tiresome,
but were not active nuisances until after his marriage. When he
found that he and Nita would not be left alone, that no matter how
scrupulously they concealed their identity it was sooner or later
discovered and they were interviewed and written up in special articles
for the newspapers he grew annoyed.
The climax came on a beautifully moonlit night at a seashore resort
where they were quite confident they would not be discovered. The beach
was like silver, and the waves were dark and mysterious, except where
the reflection of the moon glittered on their shining sides. Davis and
Nita, forgetting the world and devoutly hoping that they were by the
world forgot, sat and looked at the moon and played idly in the sand
and told each other the eternal foolishnesses that are probably the
truest wisdom. They were utterly happy just being alone with each other.
A dark figure looked up over and coughed. They started.
"You are Flight Commander and Mrs. Davis?" said a voice deprecatingly.
Davis groaned and admitted it.
"Our little villagers learned that you are visiting here, and a banquet
has been prepared in the pavilion in your honor. Won't you do us the
honor to attend?"
Davis muttered several words under his breath, for which Nita later
reprimanded him, and rose heavily.
The banquet was a great success. The freedom of the village was
given them both. Speeches were made, in which Davis was told how
superlatively clever he was. The band played "See the Conquering Hero
Comes." Davis sat miserably through it all, with Nita, scarcely less
miserable, by his side.
The next morning he sent a wire to Teddy Gerrod:
Can we come and spend our honeymoon with you? People won't let us
alone.
DAVIS.
Within an hour the answer came:
Come along. We'll let you alone. We're having a second honeymoon
ourselves.
GERROD.
Davis showed the wire to Nita.
"Splendid!" she said with a sigh of relief. Then she dimpled and looked
up at Davis. "But, Dicky, dear, we'll never have a second honeymoon
like they are having."
"We won't?" demanded Davis. "Why not?"
"Because," said Nita, putting her face very close to his. "Because our
first one is never going to stop."
THE END.
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