~~~ Project Gutenberg Australia ~~~

Title: The Lanson Screen
Author: Kenneth Robeson
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Language: English
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Date first posted: July 2006
Date most recently updated: July 2006

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The Lanson Screen
Arthur Leo Zagat




CHAPTER 1

Harry Osborn, First Lieutenant U. S. Army Air Corps, banked his wide-
winged bombing plane in an easy, swooping curve. In the distance New
York's white pinnacles caught the sun above a blue-gray billowing of
twilight ground-haze. A faint smile lifted the corners of his lips as
he glanced overside, saw a train crawl along shining rails and come to
a halt. Brown dots appeared from the passenger car behind its
locomotive and clustered in ordered confusion about the other oblong
that completed the train's complement.

What appeared from his altitude to be a rather large pocket-
handkerchief slid from the car and spread out on the grass. A metal
tube glittered in the sun, came into motion, swivelling to the east.
It looked like a cap-pistol, but Osborn knew it to be an eighteen-inch
railroad gun.

He slanted down through lambent air. The terrain below was flat,
lushly green. It was entirely vacant save at the very center of its
five-mile sweep of marsh. Here a small hut was visible in the middle
of a hundred-yard area ringed by a water-filled moat.

Two manikins stood before the structure. One was clothed in o.d., the
other in black. The civilian's tiny arms gesticulated, and he went
into the house. The army man moved sharply into an automobile and sped
in the direction of the waiting artillery train.

"Five minutes to zero, Harry." The voice of Jim Raynes, his observer,
sounded in the pilot's earphones, "What's the dope?"

"Target practice, Jim. We're to spot for the railroad gun and then
we're to bomb. The target is-Good Lord!"

The plane wabbled with Osborn's sudden jerk on its stick, steadied.
"Harry!" Raynes exclaimed. "What is it, Harry?"

"The target's that house down there. There's a man inside it. I saw
him go in."

"The hell! What's the big idea?"

"Search me. There's no mistake though. Orders say 'absolute secrecy is
to be maintained by all participants in this maneuver as to anything
they may observe...'"

"Maybe it's an execution. Something special. Maybe-"

"...and this order is to be obeyed to the letter no matter what the
apparent consequences," Osborn finished. "General Darius Thompson
signed it personally, not 'by direction.' Tie that, will you?"

"I can't. But-it's orders."

Osborn levelled out, got his eyes focussed on the astounding target.

Suddenly there was nothing within the watery circle. Not blackness, or
a deep hole, or anything similarly startling but understandable. It
was as if a blind spot had suddenly developed in his own visual organs
so that he could not see what there was at that particular point,
although the wide green expanse of the swampy plain was elsewhere
clear and distinct.

A key scraped in the door of a third-floor flat on Amsterdam Avenue.
Junior's two-year-old legs betrayed him and he sprawled headlong on
the threadbare rug in the little foyer.

John Sims bent to his first-born, tossed him into the air, caught him
and chuckled at the chubby, dirt-grimed face. He'd been tired as the
devil a moment before. But now-

June Sims was flushed from the heat of the kitchen range, but her
black hair was neat and a crisply ironed housedress outlined her young
slim figure. Junior was a warm bundle against her breasts as she
kissed John.

"You're early, dear. I'm glad."

"Me too. What's for supper?"

"Pot roast." June's hazel eyes danced. "Johnny, mother phoned. She's
going to come over tomorrow night to take care of Junior so that we
can go out and celebrate your birthday."

"That's right! Tomorrow is May ninth!"

"Yes. Listen, I have it all planned. 'Alone With Love' is playing at
the Audubon. We'll see that, and then splurge with chow mein. I've
saved two dollars out of the house money just for that."

"You have! Maybe you'd better get yourself a bat. I saw an ad-"

"Nothing doing. We're going to celebrate! You go downtown." And so on,
and on...

"They're starting, Harry."

Raynes' businesslike crispness somewhat eased Lieutenant Osborn's
feeling that something uncanny was happening down there and his hand
was steady as be jerked the stick to cope with the bump of the big
gun's discharge. A dirt mushroom sprouted in the field.

"Short, two-tenths. Right, four point three," Jim intoned, correcting
the range.

A white panel on the ground acknowledged his message. The cannon fired
again and slid back in the oil-checked motion of its recoil.

"Over a tenth. Center."

The target was bracketed, the next try must be a hit. Harry banked,
levelled out. The brown dots that were the gunners jerked about
feverishly, reloading. Whatever it was that obscured his vision of the
shack would be smashed in a moment now.

The gunners were clear. The pilot saw an officer's arm drop in signal
to fire. Yellow light flickered from the big rifle. Osborn imagined he
saw the projectile arc just under his plane. His eye flicked to where
that house should be.

And nothing happened! No geyser of dirt to show a miss, no dispersal
of that annoying blind spot. Had the gun misfired?

Wait? What was that black thing gliding in mid-air, sliding slowly,
then more rapidly toward the ground? The shell that could pierce ten
inches of armor was incredibly falling along what seemed the surface
of an invisible hemisphere.

It reached the grass and exploded with the contact. The earth it threw
up spattered against-nothing. Why hadn't the shell exploded on contact
with whatever had stopped it? What was going on down there?

"I-I can't make a report, sir." There was a quiver in Jim's phlegmatic
voice. Even his aplomb had now been pierced. "I think it would have
been a hit, but-"

Again and again the great gun fired. Osborn and Raynes, got the signal
to go ahead, dropped five three-hundred-pound bombs point-blank on the
mysterious nothingness. The area around the circular canal was pitted.
excavated, scarred as No Man's Land had never been.

Aviation Lieutenant Harry Osborn flew back to Mitchell Field in the
gathering dusk. His young head was full of dizzy visions. Armies,
cities, a whole nation blanketed from attack by invisibility. Spheres
of nothingness driving deep into enemy territory, impregnable.

It was good to be alive, and in the old uniform, on this eighth day of
May in 1937.




CHAPTER 2

In the tea room of the Ritz-Plaza, the violins of Ben Donnie's
orchestra sobbed to the end of a melodic waltz. Anita Harrison-Smith
fingered a tiny liqueur glass nervously.

"I'm afraid, Ted. What if he suspects, and-"

The long-fingered hand of the man whose black eyes burned so into hers
fisted on the cloth.

"Afraid. That has been always the trouble with you, Nita. You have
always been afraid to grasp happiness. Well, I can't make you do it.
But I've told you that I'm sick of this hole-and-corner business. If
you don't come with me tomorrow, as we have planned, I go alone. You
will never see me again."

The woman's face went white and she gasped.

"No! I couldn't bear that. I'll come, Ted. I'll come."

Van Norden's sharp, dark features were expressionless, but there was
faint triumph in the sly purr of his voice.

"Have you got it straight? The Marechal Fock sails at midnight
tomorrow from Pier 57, foot of West Fifteenth Street. You must get
away from the Gellert dance not later than eleven-thirty. I'll meet
you at the pier, but if there is a slip-up remember that your name is
Sloane. Anita Sloane. I have everything ready, stateroom, passports,
trunks packed with everything you can possibly need. You have nothing
to do but get there. Whether you do or not I'll sail. And never come
back."

"I'll be there," she breathed.

"Good girl. Tomorrow is the ninth. By the nineteenth we will be in
Venice."

General Darius Thompson stood at the side of his olive-green Cadillac
and looked at his watch. The bombing plane was a vanishing sky-speck
just above the horizon, the railroad-gun had chugged back toward its
base. He was alone under the loom of that sphere of nothingness
against which the army's most powerful weapons had battered in sheer
futility. It existed. It was real. Unbelievably.

A man was in the doorway of the flimsy but that had been the target of
the shells. Quarter-inch lenses made his bulging eyes huge; his
highdomed head was hairless and putty-colored; his body was obscenely
fat. Professor Henry Lanson gave one the impression that he was
somehow less than human, that he was a slug uncovered beneath an
overturned rock. But his accession to the Columbia University faculty
had been front-page news and the signal for much academic gloating.

"Well?" From gross lips the word plopped into the warm air like a clod
into mud. "What do you think now, my dear General? Against my Screen
your biggest shells were as puffballs. Yes? Your most gigantic bombs
as thistledown. You thought me utterly insane when I insisted on
remaining within." The scientist grinned, humorlessly. "What do you
think now?"

Thompson shook his grizzled head, as if to rid it of a nightmare. "You
took an awful chance. Suppose it had cracked."

"Cracked! In the name of Planck cannot you understand that the Lanson
Screen is not matter that can crack?" The other spread veined, pudgy
hands. "It is the negation of all energy, a dimensionless shell
through which energy cannot penetrate. And since matter is a form of
energy-" The physicist checked himself, shrugged. "But what's the use?
I cannot expect you to understand. Besides myself there are perhaps a
dozen in the world who could comprehend, and none is an American.
Enough for you to know that I had to be inside to operate the B
machine that cut the negative force the A apparatus set up. From
outside it could not be done. The Screen would have remained forever
and you would not be convinced there had been no effect of your
bombardment within it."

"Could you not have managed some remote control device, some way of
working your B machine from outside?"

"Lord, but you military men are stupid!" the physicist burst out
exasperatedly. "Don't you understand yet that once the Lanson Screen
is erected all within is, as absolutely cut off from the rest of the
universe as if it were a different space, a different dimension?
Nothing can penetrate within-electricity, wireless, the cosmic rays,
the sun's radiations. Nothing!"

"Then if a city were covered by it, as you suggest, there would be no
means of communication with the outside?"

"That is correct."

"If knowledge of this were universal there could be no more war."
Thompson's gray eyes lifted and met the other's. A momentary silence
intervened while a message flashed between these two so diverse
characters. Then the general went on. "But if it were the exclusive
property of a single nation that nation could become master of the
world."

Lanson nodded. His voice betrayed knowledge of the rapprochement
established in that single, long glance. "If I published my results I
should gain very little from it. But if I sell it to one power it is
worth almost anything I choose to demand. That is why I have worked at
it alone. That is why I have never set the details down on paper, to
be stolen. After I have sold the invention to you secrecy will be your
concern, but till you meet my terms all knowledge of how I produce the
effect remains here in my brain." Lanson tapped his clifflike brow.
"Here and nowhere else."

"After we purchase it you might still sell your device to others."

"With a million dollars in hand I shall have no temptation to do so.
No one could want, or use, more. That is one reason why you should be
willing to recommend its payment."

The general shrugged. "I can get it for you when I am convinced that
you can veil an entire city as you did this one small house. It seems
to me impossible, or so tremendous a task, requiring such huge
installations, such vast power, that it would be forbiddingly costly."

The physicist's grating, short laugh was contemptuous. "I'll shield
New York for you with the same machine I used here, with the same
power storage batteries not larger than those in your car. Their
energy is needed, for only an instant, to start the complex
functioning of forces whose result you have just witnessed. I'll erect
a screen for you about Manhattan Island, an ellipsoid as high and as
deep as the least axis of the enclosing rivers. Will that satisfy
you?"

"If you can do it, and I cannot blast through, it will. When can you--
get ready?"

"As soon as I can move my machines to the required location, and set
them up. Tomorrow night, if you wish."

"Very well. What help do you require?

"Only an army truck to convey my apparatus, and, since I will use the
rivers as a delimiting guide for the screen, a place near the water to
set it up."

The general was eager now, eager as the other. "I'll order a truck out
here at once. And there is an army pier at West One Hundred and
Thirtieth Street that you can use. I'll see that it is made ready for
you."




CHAPTER 3

Midnight of May eighth, 1937. An army truck noses into the Holland
Tunnel. On its flat bed are two tarpaulin-covered bulks, machinery of
some sort. Its driver is crowded against his wheel by the rotund form
of a blackclad civilian whose chins hang in great folds on his stained
shirt and whose bulging eyes glow with a strange excitement behind
thick lenses. The truck comes out on Hudson Street and turns north.

Tenth Avenue is alive as puffing trains bring the city's food for
tomorrow. A herd of bewildered cattle file into an abattoir. West End
Avenue's apartment houses are asleep. Under the Riverside Viaduct a
milk plant is alight and white tank trucks rumble under its long
canopy. At One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street the army van waits for
a mile-long refrigerator car, loaded with fruit from California, to
clear the tracks it must cross. The way is cleared. The truck thunders
across cobbles and steel, vanishes within the dark maw of a silent
pier.

Two blocks eastward a lighted subway train crawls out on its trestle
for a breath of air, pauses fleetingly, dives underground again like a
monstrous serpent seeking its burrow. Above the southward course of
that burrow midtown Broadway is a streak of vari-colored illumination,
exploding into frantic coruscation and raucous clamor at Forty-seventh
Street. Crowds surge on sidewalks, in shrieking cabs, private cars;
pleasure seekers with grim, intent faces rushing to grills, night
clubs; rushing home, rushing as if life must end before they can
snatch enough of it from greedy Time. Blare of the latest swing tune
sets the rhythm for them from a loud-speaker over the garish entrance
of a so-called music store.

Time writes its endless tale in letters of fire drifting along a
mourning band around Time's own tower.

MARKET CLOSES STRONG TWO POINTS UP PRESIDENT ANNOUNCES RECOVERY
ACCOMPLISHED CHAMPION CONFIDENT OF VICTORY FRIDAY HITLER DEFIES LEAGUE
POLICE WILL SMASH DOCK RACKET SAYS VALENTINE GIANTS WIN....

There is no Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin written on that slender wall
for sonte prophet to read.

Felix Hammond knots the gold sash rope of his black silk dressing
gown. His satin slippers make no sound as they cross the thick pile of
the glowing Kermanshah on the floor of his study to a darkly brooding
Italian Renaissance secretary. He fumbles in the drawer for a silent
moment, pulls out a book whose tooled-leather cover should be in some
museum. He sits down, opens the book.

Minuscular, neat writing fills page after page. Hammond reads an
entry. Something that might be a smile flits across his ascetic
countenance. His bloodless lips wince at another item. He riffles the
sheets rapidly to the first blank space, reaches for a fountain pen
and starts writing.

May 8: Wednesday. Another day gone. I confess I do not know why I
continue this diary, except, it may be, that it serves as a reminder
of the utter futility of life. There are, however, certain scarlet
pages, and lavender ones also, that still have the power to titillate
emotions I thought long atrophied. I wonder if anyone save I will ever
read them.

Aloysia opened in her new show tonight. I have just come from the
theatre. She wanted me to join the supper Stahlbaum is giving the
company, but I declined with thanks-thanks that I was in a position to
decline. Time was that I should have leaped at the invitation, but I
no longer need to share her with others. Her part suits her-Norton has
given her fully two-thirds of the lines and she trails languid
sensuality across the stage to her heart's content. I noticed that she
used that trick with the mouth she first developed for my benefit. It
was lost on the rabble...




CHAPTER 4

Eleven p.m., Thursday, May ninth, 1937.

Item: June Sims hangs on her husband's arm as they exit from the
Audubon Theatre. Her eyes sparkle with happiness. She sighs
tremulously. Then: "Johnny. Maybe we'd better call up and see if
Junior is all right before we go eat."

Item: Anita Harrison-Smith peers over the shoulder of her black-coated
dance partner with narrowed eyes. The florid-faced, heavy man in the
alcove they are just passing is her husband. His companion is Rex
Cranston, president of the A.P.&C.

Without hearing she knows their talk is of debentures, temporary
reactions, resistance points on Cumulative Index graphs. Howard
Harrison-Smith has forgotten Anita exists, will remain oblivious of
her till she comes for him to take her home.

Her small red lips set in a firmer line. He has a long wait ahead of
him tonight.

Item: Aloysia Morne lets her ermine cape slide into Felix Hammond's
deft hands. He bends and kisses her where a shoulder no less white
than the snowy fur melts into the perfect column of her neck. She
turns with studied grace, and her throaty voice reproduces the deepest
note of a 'cello.

"Do you know, Felix, this lovely place of yours is more home to me
than my own so-grand rooms." Hammond smiles thinly, and does not
answer.

Item: In the dim light of a decrepit pier jutting into the Hudson
Professor Henry Lanson is more than ever like a gigantic larva as he
putters about a grotesque combination of steel rods and glittering,
lenticulai copper bowls out of which a brass cylinder points
telescopelike at the zenith.

An arm-thick cable crawls over the pier's frayed boards, and coils
over their edge to the water. Lanson turns and checks connections on
another, smaller machine.

Far across the Hudson's black surface loom the Palisades. A dash of
yellow luminance zigzags against their ebony curtain, a trolley
climbing to where an amusement park is an arabesque of illumination
against the overcast sky.

To the right the cables of George Washington Bridge dip, twin
catenaries of dotted light, and rise again. A red spark and a green
one are the apices of moire, chromatic ribbons rippling across the
water to the pier head from the deeper shadow of an army launch.

Braced vertically, five feet behind that pierhead, is a whitewashed
steel plate. This is the target for the automatic rifle that will be
fired from that bobbing launch as a first trial of the Lanson Screen's
efficacy.

Other tests will follow, later. But General Thompson will not yet
chance firing artillery into Manhattan.

Henry Lanson calls, in his voice without resonance, "Ready, General.
Ten minutes for the first try."

From across the water Thompson snaps, "Ready. Go ahead."

Lanson lumbers back to his machine, thrusts at a lever. There is no
sound, no vibration. Suddenly the river, the Palisades, disappear. The
amusement park is gone, the inverted necklaces of pearly light that
mark the bridge cables. There is no sky. Lanson looks at his wrist
watch.

"Ten minutes," he chuckles. "He couldn't get through in ten thousand
years."

He is very sure of himself, this man. But perhaps there is a minute
residuum of doubt in his mind. After all, he has never experimented
with so vast an extension of his invention's power. He thuds to the
steel target, puts one doughy paw against it, leans out to view its
riverward surface. Will there be any flecks of black on it to show the
impact of the bullets that are being fired at it?

Is he warned by a sound, a creak? One cannot know. At any rate he is
too obese, too ponderous, to avoid catastrophe. Under his leaning
weight the steel plate rips from flimsy braces. Falls.

Its edge thuds against the physicist's head, knocks him down, crushes
his skull.

Professor Henry Lanson's brain, and its secrets, are a smear of dead
protoplasm mixed with shattered bone and viscous blood.




CHAPTER 5

Eleven-twenty-eight p.m., Thursday, May ninth, 1937.

The lights are dim in Foo Komg's pseudo-Oriental establishment. John
Sims spoons sugar into a hot teapot.

"I'm going to make a lawyer out of Junior," he says slowly. "He'll go
to Dartmouth for his academic course and then to Harvard. He won't
have to start working right out of high school like I did."

John is reminded of the days before June belonged to him by the
setting, by the dreamy light in her eyes.

"Let's walk down Broadway," he says, "when we get through here." That
is what they used to do when all the glittering things in the store
windows did not seem quite as unattainable as they did now.

"No, Johnny. I want to go home. I have a queer feeling there's
something wrong. Mother isn't so young any more, and she's forgotten
what to do if a child is croupy or anything."

"Silly. Nothing's wrong."

"Take me home, hon."

"Oh, all right." Petulantly. "It's just like you to spoil things..."

Anita Harrison-Smith slips out of the side door of the old Gellert
Mansion on East Sixty-first Street. She signals a taxi.

"Pier Fifty-seven." Her violet eyes are deep, dark pools and a visible
pulse throbs in her temple...

Nobody looks at the sky. Nobody ever looks at the sky in New York.
Nobody knows the sky has suddenly gone black, fathomless.




CHAPTER 6

Later:

"Nita!"

"Ted I-"

"You did come! Here, driver, what's the fare?"

The cab circles in Fifteenth Street, vanishes eastward. Van Norden
takes the woman's arm.

"Have any trouble getting away?"

"No." She is quivering. "Hurry, darling. Let's get on board before
anyone sees us."

"There's some trouble. Fog or something. The pier doors are closed,
but the officials say they'll be open again directly. They won't sail
without us."

"Look, Ted, it is a heavy fog. Why, you can't see the river from here.
Even the other end of the ship is hidden. But there isn't any haze
here. Queer. The ship seems to be cut in half; it's quite distinct up
to a certain point, then there just isn't anything more. It's black,
not gray like fog ought to be."

"Let's go in that little lunch wagon till we can get aboard. Nobody
will look for us in there."

"Let's. I'm afraid, Ted. I'm terribly afraid..."

Nobody looks at the sky except General Darius Thompson, bobbing in a
little launch on the Hudson. He is staring at vacancy where New York
had been a quarter hour before. Up the river the cables of the great
Bridge come out of nothingness, dip, and rise to the western shore.

Toward the Bay there is nothing to show where the metropolis should
be. No light, no color. Nothing. Sheer emptiness. He looks at the
radiant figures on his watch once more.

"Wonder what's keeping the old fool," he growls. "He should have
dissipated the screen five minutes ago."

The night is warm, but General Thompson shivers suddenly, an appalling
speculation beats at his mind, but he will not acknowledge it. He
dares not.

A hundred yards from Thompson, in another space, a device of steel and
copper and brass stands quiescent over the unmoving body of the one
man who knew its secret.

Into the dim recesses of the army pier a dull hum penetrates, the
voice of a million people going about their nightly pursuits, unaware,
as yet, of doom.

In his cubicle on the hundred and ninetieth floor of New York
University's Physics Building, Howard Cranston watched the moving
needle of his Merton Calculator with narrowed eyes. If the graph that
was slowly tracing itself on the result-sheet took the expected form,
a problem that had taxed the ingenuity of the world's scientists for
sixty years would be solved at last.

The lanky young physicist could not know it, but the electrically
operated "brain" was repeating in thirty minutes calculations it bad
taken Henry Lanson three years to perform, two generations before. His
own contribution had been only an idea, and knowledge of the proper
factors to feed into the machine.

A red line curved on the co-ordinate sheet, met a previously drawn
blue one. A bell tinkled, and there was silence in the room.

Breath came from between Cranston's lips in a long sigh. Curiously, he
felt no elation.

He crossed the room slowly, and looked out through the glassite-
covered aperture in the south wall. Just below, elevated highways were
a tangles maze in the afternoon sun, and helicopters danced like a
cloud of weaving midges. But Cranston neither heard nor saw them. His
gaze was fixed farther away, down there where a curious cloud humped
against the horizon, a cloud that was a challenging piling of vacancy;
something that existed, that occupied space, yet was nothing.

Beyond it he could see the shimmering surface of New York Bay, and
rising from it a tall white shaft. At the apex of that shaft a
colossal figure faced him. It was a gigantic woman of bronze, her head
bowed, her hands pressed to her heavy breasts that agonized in
frustration. The Universal Mother stood in eternal mourning over the
visible but unseen grave of millions.

"It might be dangerous," Howard Cranston muttered. "The gases of the
decomposed bodies-there was no way for them to escape. Before I start
building the machine I must find out. Carl Langdon will know."

He turned away. "But first I'll draw it up. It's simple enough-will
take less than a week to build."

The design that presently took pictured form under Howard Cranston's
flying fingers was strangely like that which sixty years ago Henry
Lanson had called his B machine. But there was a difference. This one
could be used from outside the Screen.

With the aid of this, by expanding the radius to include the original
barrier, it would be a simple matter to destroy the hemiobloid of
impenetrable force that was a city's tomb, to release the force which
Lanson had set up.




CHAPTER 7

Rand Barridon's flivver-plane settled before a graceful small
structure of metal and glass. He swung his rather square body out of
the fuselage, crunched up the gravel path.

The door opened, irislike, as he stepped into the beam of the
photoray. Somewhere inside a deep-toned gong sounded, and tiny
pattering feet made a running sound. "Daddy! Daddy's home!"

Blond ringlets were an aureole around tiny Rob's chubby face. The
father bent to him, tossed him in the air, caught him dexterously.
Ruth Barridon appeared, taller than her husband, her countenance a
maturer, more feminine replica of the boy's. Rob was a warm bundle
against her breasts as her lips met Rand's. "You're late, hon.
Supper's been ready twenty minutes."

"I know. We were talking about what they found down there." He
gestured vaguely to the south. "One of the fellows flew down last
night. They wouldn't let him land. But he saw enough, hovering on the
five thousand foot level, to keep him awake all night."

Ruth paled, shuddered. "What an awful thing it must have been. You
know, nobody ever thought much about it. The cloud had been there all
our lives and it really didn't seem to mean anything. But seeing all
those buildings where people just like us once lived and worked,
seeing those..."

"Afterward, dear." Ruth caught the signal of the man's eyes to the
quietly listening child and stopped. "I'm hungry. Let's get going."

The soft glow of artificial daylight in the Barridon living room is
reflected cozily from its walls of iridescent metal. Rand stretches
himself, yawns. "What's on tap tonight, hon?"

"We're staying home for a change."

"I thought this was Matilda's night."

"It is. But Mrs. Carter asked me to change with her, she had something
on. And I would rather stay home. There's a new play by Stancourt. I
think they call it 'Alone with Love.' Fred Barrymore is taking the
lead."

"That gigolo-I can't see what you women find in him!"

"Rand! That's just a pose. You know darn well you turn him on every
time."

"Oh, all right. But let's get the magazine viewcast first. They always
have something interesting." He crosses the room, touches an
ornamental convolution on the wall. A panel slides noiselessly
sideward, revealing a white screen. A switch clicks, the room dims,
the screen glows with an inner light. Rand twirls a knob.

The wall-screen becomes half of an oval room, hung with gray
draperies, gray-carpeted. There is a small table in the room, behind
it show the legs and back of a chair. Like the furniture in the
Barridons' own place, table and chair are of lacquered metal, but
these are gray. The drapes part, a tall man comes through. His face is
long, pinched, his blond hair bristles straight up from his scalp, and
his brown eyes are grave. The impact of a strong personality reaches
out from the televised image, vibrant with a stagy dominance even over
the miles of space intervening between actuality and reproduction.

"Oh, it's Grant Lowndes," Ruth breathes. "I love him!"

"Shhh." Barridon is intent. "Shhh."

The Radio Commission's premier reader moves with practiced grace. An
adept at building up interest in trivialities by pantomimed
portentousness, Lowndes is weaving a spell about his far-flung
audience that will assure him concentrated attention. As he sinks into
the seat his eyes stare from the screen with hypnotic penetration. He
places a book on the table before him. Its covers are of tooled
leather, but there is a smudge of green mould across them concealing
the design. He opens it.

The pages are yellow, frayed-edged. Faded handwriting is visible;
miniscular. An old diary, perhaps, picked up from some dusty second-
hand display.

"Good evening, friends." His voice is mellow, warming, vibrant with a
peculiar tensity. Ruth's tiny, stifled gasp is a tribute to its art.
"The manufacturers of General Flyers Helioplanes have honored me
tonight with a great privilege and a sad task. I bring to you a voice
from the past, a voice long silent, speech from a throat long
mouldered into dust, thoughts from a brain whose very molecules are
one with the snows of yesteryear. I bring to you the palpitant, living
agony of the greatest catastrophe the world has ever known." His eyes
drop to the volume on the lectern, and his slim, white hand presses
down upon its face.

"My colleagues of the viewcast service have informed you of the
rending of the veil that sixty-two years ago cut off Manhattan Island
from the world. They have brought into your homes the awful vision of
dead buildings; dead streets strewn with twisted skeletons. You have,
I am sure, tried to picture what must have happened there in the
tragic days till eternal silence fell and the entombed city had become
a vast necropolis. Today, my friends, the searchers found an account
of one man's experience, a painstakingly written chronicle of that
time. General Flyers is sponsoring the presentation to you of this
human, pitiful tale. I will quote from the diary."




CHAPTER 8

May 9, Thursday: It is four in the morning. Aloysia came here with me
from the theatre... I have just returned from escorting her to the
place where she resides. She does not call it home-that name she
reserves for these rooms. "Home, Felix," she said, "is the place where
happiness dwells." I recognized that, it is a line from one of her
earlier appearances. Her mind is a blotter, seizing the thoughts, the
ideas, the mental images of others and becoming impregnated with them.
No. Molding itself to them. Perhaps that is the secret of her arts-
dramatic and amatory.

I am restless, uneasy. There is a peculiar feeling in the air, a vague
sense of impending catastrophe. Even the recollection of the past few
hours with her does not drive it away...

I thought music might fit my mood. But the radio is out of gear.
Tonight nothing but silence. Strangely enough the police talk was
roaring in. There seems to be some trouble along the waterfront...

It ought to be getting on to dawn, but it is still pitch dark outside.
There isn't any breeze. The sky is absolutely black. I have never seen
anything like it in New York. Clouds at night always reflect the glow
of the city lights. And if there are no clouds there should be stars,
a moon. Can there be a storm coming down on the big city-a tornado?
That would explain the way I feel.

May 10, Friday: There has been no daylight today. The only
illumination is artificial. Somehow that seems the worst of what has
happened to the city. For something has happened. Manhattan is
surrounded by an impenetrable barrier. Nobody, nothing can get in or
out. There have been no trains at Grand Central or Penn Station, the
subway is operating only within the borders of Manhattan Island.

I have been driving around with Aloysia all day. In spite of the
darkness things went on very much as usual in the morning-children
went to school, toilers to their work. It dawned only gradually that
more than half the staffs in offices and stores had not shown up.
Those who do not live in Manhattan. At noon the newspapers came out
with scare headlines. Every bridge out of the city is closed off by
the veil of-what can I call it? Every pier. A cover has shut down over
us as if Manhattan were a platter on which a planked steak was being
brought from the kitchen of the Ritz Plaza. Even the telephone and
telegraph have been affected.

By three in the afternoon the whole city was in the streets. My car
was forced to move at a crawl. There was no sign of fear, though. The
general consensus was that the phenomenon was something thrilling, a
welcome break in the humdrum of daily existence. The mayor's
proclamation, in the newspapers and over the few radio stations
located within the city, seemed quite superfluous. He urged the people
to be calm. Whatever it was that had shut us in was only temporary, it
would vanish of itself or a way would be found to get rid of it. He
has appointed a committee of scientists from Columbia and the City
Colleges to investigate and make plans. The best of them all, however,
is unavailable. Henry Lanson. He was found crushed to death on a
Hudson River pier, killed in some obscure experiment.

Aloysia left me in time for the evening performance. The theaters and
movie houses are crowded-they have had the best day in their history.

At ten o'clock tonight I went to take a drink of water. None ran from
the tap. I called the superintendent and he said the mains had been
shut off. There was no longer any pressure. Police orders are that
water is to be used only for drinking and cooking. It is being pumped
from the main by fire engines stationed at the hydrants and a
rationing system has been devised. I have two or three cases of
Perrier-they should be sufficient for my needs till this thing is
over. There is plenty of wine and Scotch, but I have no desire for
alcohol.




CHAPTER 9

May 11, Saturday: The darkness still continues. No milk was delivered
this morning. Prices for food have begun to go up. There is very
little fresh meat to be had, practically no vegetables or fruits.
Evaporated milk is being sold at a dollar a can. I am afraid the
children are going to suffer a great deal...




CHAPTER 10

May 12, Sunday: Church was packed. There have been several riots in
the poorer sections of the city. Grocery stores were raided, a
warehouse gutted. The militia has been called out, and all stocks of
food taken over by the authorities for rationing.

Aloysia has just appeared, bag and baggage. She says she feels safe
only here. I am going out to see what is going on.

Two p.m.: There is no longer any water in the system! The lakes in
Central Park are being emptied, the fluid taken to breweries and
distilleries nearby, where the water is being filtered and
chlorinated. The little thus obtained, and canned fruit juices,
furnish the only drink for children. Adults are drinking beer and
wine.

My car was stopped by a detail of national guardsmen in uniform. No
gasoline engines are to be run any longer. There is no escape for the
carbon monoxide fumes being generated, and they are poisoning the
atmosphere. There already have been several deaths from this cause.

A fire started in an apartment house on Third Avenue. It was
extinguished by chemicals. I wonder how long that will be efficacious?

I thought I was fairly well stocked up for at least a week. But with
Aloysia here, her maid and my own man, my stock of food and drinkables
is rapidly disappearing. For the first time I have sent Jarvis out to
the food depots, with an affidavit setting forth the size of my
"family," my residence, etc. I understand that each adult is being
allotted one can of meat or vegetables, and one pint of water, per
day.

Three p.m.: All house lights have been turned off to conserve coal. I
am writing by candle. Street lighting is still maintained. There has
been no gas since the Darkness fell, the plant being in Astoria. As my
own kitchen has an electric range this did not impress me, but I
understand those not so taken care of had been displaying remarkable
ingenuity. Several families had upended electric laundry irons and
used those as grills. That is ended now. However, there is so little
to cook that the lack of heat hardly brings added hardship.

Jarvis has not yet returned.

Midnight: From my window I can overlook quite a large portion of the
city. A vast black pall rests over us, relieved only by the network of
glowing lamps outlining the streets. Even these seem to be growing
dimmer.

My valet, Jarvis, is still among the missing. He has been with me for
ten years. I thought him loyal, honest. He was honest with respect to
money. I have trusted him with large sums and never found him
faithless. But money is worth nothing today, while food...

Stress reveals the inner nature of the human animal. I met the
Harrison-Smiths today, walking along Park Avenue in the foreboding
restlessness that is keeping all New York on the sidewalks. The
usually iron-visaged banker presented a countenance whose color
matched the clammy hue of a dead fish's belly. His heavy jowls were
dewlaps quivering with fear. Even while we talked his eyes clung to
his wife, who was erect, a bright white flame in the Darkness. Her
eyes were answering the appeal in his. She had strength enough for
both, and was keeping him from collapse by sheer, silent will. The
gossips, this winter, were buzzing about Anita and Ted Van Norden, the
wastrel who reminds me so much of my own youth. There could not have
been any truth in the rumors.




CHAPTER 11

May 13, Monday: Noon, I went out at five this morning to take my place
in the long line at the food station. I have just returned with my
booty. One can of sardines and a six-ounce bottle of soda-to maintain
three adults twenty-four hours! On my way back I saw a man, well-
dressed, chasing an alley cat. He caught it, killed it with a blow of
his fist, and stuffed it in a pocket.

The air is foul with stench. A white hearse passed me, being pushed by
men on foot. Someone told me that Central Park is being used as a
burying ground.

I stopped to watch the passing hearse near a National Guardsman, a
slim young chap whose uniform did not fit him very well. He spoke to
me. "That's the worst of this thing, sir, what it's doing to
children." Under his helmet his eyes were pits of somber fire. "Just
think of the babies without milk. The canned stuff gave out today. My
own kid is sick in bed; he can't stand the junk we've been giving him.
June-that's my wife-is clean frantic."

I wanted to comfort him, but what, was there to say? "How old is your
youngster?" I asked.

"Junior is two. And a swell brat! You ought to hear him talk a mile a
minute. He's going to be a lawyer when he grows up."

I listened to him for a while, then made some excuse and got away. I
had to or he would have seen that my eyes were wet.

Later: Aloysia has slept all day. All the windows in the apartment are
open, but the air is heavy, stifling. It is difficult to move, to
breathe. The shell that encloses us is immense, but eventually the
oxygen in the enclosed air must be used up. Then what?

Unless relief comes soon death will be beforehand, the mass death of
all the teeming population of this island. One must face that. Just
what form will it take? Starvation, thirst, asphyxiation? Queer. I,
who have so often babbled of the futility of life, do not want to die.
It is-unpleasant-to contemplate utter extinction, the absolute end of
self. I wish I believed in immortality-in some sort of future life.
Even to burn eternally in hell would be better than simply-to stop.

There is a red glow to the south. Is it a thinning of the Darkness?

The city seems hushed with all traffic noise stopped. But another
sound has replaced it. A high-pitched murmur, not loud, but
omnipresent, insistent. I have just realized what it is. Children
crying. Thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, hungry children-
thirsty children...




CHAPTER 12

May 14, Tuesday: The clock says it is morning. It is not dark outside
any more. A red light suffuses the scene, the light of the gigantic
flame that has enveloped all the lower end of the Island. There is no
wind. The conflagration is spreading very slowly, but it is coming
inexorably. Overhead are vast rolling billows of smoke, edged with
scarlet glare. Below there is a turbulent sea of human beings. The
roar of the fire, pent-in and reverberant, mingles with the crash of
breaking glass, the rattle of rifle shots, a growling animal-like
sound that is the voice of the mob. They are engaged in a carnival of
destruction, a blind, mad venting of protest against the doom that has
overtaken them. I had a dog once that was run over by some fool in a
truck. When I went to pick it up it snarled and sank its teeth in my
hand. That is like those people down there. They do not know what has
hurt them, but they must hurt someone in return.

Where they find the strength to fight I do not know. I can scarcely
move. My tongue fills my mouth. It is almost impossible to breathe.

Aloysia has just called me. It was the ghost of a word, her "Felix."
In a moment I shall go in to her and lie down beside her.

Grant Lowndes looks up from the book.

"That is all," he says simply. "In an inner room of the apartment
where Ns was found the searchers discovered two skeletons on the
mouldering ruin of a bed, a man's and a woman's.

"General Flyers bids you good night. I shall be with you again at this
same hour on Friday."

He turns and goes slowly out through the gray curtains. The diary
remains on the little gray table. Shadows close in from the edges of
the screen, concentrating light within their contracting circle. The
book is the last thing visible. That, too, is gone...

There is silence in the living room for a long minute. Rand Barridon
reaches to the radiovisor switch, clicks it off. The screen is blankly
white in the glow of the room light.

"You know," Barridon says slowly. "The city wasn't all burned up.
Guess the fire burned up all the oxygen and put itself out. That was
what killed the people too."

Ruth sighs tremulously. "Rand, I was thinking about that one thing he
said, about that soldier that was worried about his sick little boy.
Just think if anything like that were to happen to our Rob."

"Say, I noticed that too. The fellow had a good idea. That's what
we're going to make of the kid, a lawyer. Big money and not too much
hard work. We'll send him to Dartmouth first, and then to Harvard. A
fellow was telling me they've got the best law school in the country."



THE END

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