Astounding Stories, June, 1931 Part 23

The white meteor was the vehicle of "Paul," the dictator. From it had come the radio message whose source had moved so swiftly. I saw this all plainly.

There was a conference of high officials at the War Department Building, and the Secretary summed up all that was said:

"A new form of air-flight, and a new weapon more destructive than any we have known! That charge of explosive that was fired at the Capitol was so small as to be unseen. We can't meet it; we can only fight.

Fight on till the end."

A message came in as we sat there, a message to the Commander-in-Chief who had come over from the White House under military guard.

"Surrender!" it demanded; "I have shown you my power; it is inexhaustible, unconquerable. Surrender or be destroyed; it is the dawn of a new day, the day of the Brotherhood of Man. Let bloodshed cease. Surrender! I command it! Paul."

The President of the United States held the flimsy paper in his hand.

He rose slowly to his feet, and he read it aloud to all of us a.s.sembled there; read it to the last hateful word. Then:

"Surrender?" he asked. He turned steady, quiet eyes upon the big flag whose red and white and blue made splendid the wall behind him--and I'll swear that I saw him smile.

We have had many presidents since '76; big men, some of them; tall, handsome men; men who looked as if nature had moulded them for a high place. This man was small of stature; the shortest man in all that room if he had stood, but he was big--big! Only one who is great can look deep through the whirling turmoil of the moment to find the eternal verities that are always underneath--and smile!

"Men must die,"--he spoke meditatively; in seeming communing with himself, as one who tries to face a problem squarely and honestly--"and nations must pa.s.s; time overwhelms us all. Yet there is that which never dies and never surrenders."

He looked about the room now, as if he saw us for the first time.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "we have here an ultimatum. It is backed by power which our Secretary of War says is invincible. We are faced by an enemy who would annihilate these United States, and this new power fights on the side of the enemy.

"Must we go the way of England, of France, of all Europe? It would seem so. The United States of America is doomed. Yet each one of us will meet what comes bravely, if, facing our own end, we know that the principles upon which this nation is founded must go on; if only the Stars and Stripes still floats before our closing eyes to a.s.sure us that some future day will see the resurrection of truth and of honor and kindness among men.

"We will fight, as our Secretary of War has said--fight on to the end.

We will surrender--never! That is our answer to this one who calls himself 'Paul.'"

We could not speak; I do not know how long the silence lasted. But I know that I left that room a silent man among many silent men, in whose eyes I saw a reflection of the emotion that filled my own heart.

It was the end--the end of America, of millions of American homes--but this was better than surrender to such a foe. Better death than slavery to that race of bloodthirsty oppressors.

But who was "Paul?" This question kept coming repeatedly to my mind.

The press of the country echoed the President's words, then dipped their pens in vitriol to heap scorching invective upon the head of the tyrant. The power of the Reds we might have met--or so it was felt--but this new menace gave the invaders a weapon we could not combat. It was power!--a means of flight beyond anything known!--an explosive beside which our nitro compounds were playthings for a child.

"Who is Paul?" It was not only myself who asked the question through those next long hours, but perhaps I was the only one in whose mind was a disturbing certainty that the answer was mine if I could but grasp it.

I was remembering Paris; I was thinking of that peaceful, happy city before the First of May, before the world had gone mad and a raging, red beast had laid it waste and overrun it. And of Paul Stravoinski--my friend "Straki" of college days--who had warned me. He had known what was coming. He himself had said that he had prayed to "them" for delay; that in a few weeks he would do--what?... And suddenly I knew.

Paul had succeeded; his research had ended in the dissection of the atom; he had unleashed the sub-atomic power of matter. Only this could explain the wild flight through the sky, the terrific explosion at the Capitol. It was Paul--my friend, Paul Stravoinski--who was imposing his will upon the world.

I said nothing as I took off; the swiftest plane was at my command. I might be wrong; I must not arouse false hopes; but I must find Paul.

And the papers were black with scareheads of another threat as I left Was.h.i.+ngton:

"You have twenty-four hours to surrender. There shall be one last day of grace." Signed: "Paul."

There was more of the wild talk of the beauties of this new dispensation--a mixture of idealistic folly and of threats of destruction. I needed no more to prove the truth of my suspicions. No one but the Paul I had known could cling so tenaciously to his dreams; no one but he could be so blind to the actual horror of the new oligarchy he would impose upon the world.

I flew alone; no one but myself must try to hunt him out. I paid no attention to the radio direction of the last message; he would fly far afield to send it; distance meant nothing to one who held his power. I must look for him at his laboratory, that cl.u.s.ter of deserted buildings that stood all alone by a distant railway siding; it was there he had worked.

He met me with a pistol in his hand--a tiny gun that fired only a .22 calibre bullet.

"Put down your pop-gun," I told him and brushed through the open door into the room that had been his laboratory. "I am unarmed, and I'm here to talk business.

"You are 'Paul'!" I shot the sentence at him as if it were a bullet that must strike him down.

He did not answer directly; just nodded in confirmation of some unspoken thought.

"You have found me," he said slowly; "you were the only one I feared."

Then he came out with it, and his eyes blazed with a maniacal light.

"Yes, I am Paul! and this 'pop-gun' in my hand is the weapon that destroyed your Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton. The bullet contained less than a grain of tritonite; that is the name I have given my explosive."

He aimed the little pistol toward me where I stood. "These bullets are more lightly charged--they are to protect myself--and the one ten-thousandth of a milligram in the end of each will blow you into bits! Sit down. I will not be checked now. You will never leave this place alive!"

"Less than a grain of tritonite!"--and I had seen a great building go down to dust at its touch! I sat down in the chair where he directed, and I turned away from the fanatical glare of Paul's eyes to look about me.

There was poverty here no longer; no makes.h.i.+ft apparatus greeted my eyes, but the finest of laboratory equipment. Paul read my thoughts.

"They have been liberal," he told me; "the Central Council has financed my work--though I have kept my whereabouts a secret even from them. But they would not wait. I told you in Paris, and you did not believe. And now--now I have succeeded! the research is done!"

He half turned to pick up a flake of platinum no larger than one's finger-nail; it was a weight that was used on a delicate balance.

"Matter is matter no longer," he said; "I have resolved it into energy. I hold here in my hand power to destroy an army, or to drive a fleet of s.h.i.+ps. I, Paul, will build a new world. I will give to man a surcease from labor; I will give him rest; I will do the work of the world. My tritonite that can destroy can also create; it shall be used for that alone. This is the end of war. Here is wealth; here is power; I shall give it to mankind, and, under the rule of the Brotherhood, a united world will arise and go forward to new growth, to a greater civilization, to a building of a new heaven on earth."

He was pacing up and down the room. His hands were shaking; the muscles of his face that twitched and trembled were moulded into deep lines. I sat there and realized that within that room, directly before my eyes, was the Dictator of the World. It was true--I could not doubt it--Paul Straki of college days had made his dreams come true; his research was ended. And this new "Paul" who held in those trembling hands the destinies of mankind, at whose word kings and presidents trembled, was utterly mad!

I tried to talk and tell him of the truth we knew was true. He would have none of it; his dreams possessed him. In the b.l.o.o.d.y flag of this new Russia he could see only the emblem of freedom; the men who marched beneath that banner were his brothers, unwitting in the destruction they wrought. It was all that they knew. But they fought for the right. They would cease fighting now, and would join him in the work of moulding a new race. And even their leaders, who had sometimes opposed--were they not kind at heart? Had they not checked the advance of an irresistible army to give him and his new weapon an opportunity to open the eyes of the people? Theirs was no wish to destroy; their hearts ached for their victims who refused to listen and could be convinced only by force.

And as he talked on there pa.s.sed before my eyes the vision of an aerial torpedo and a blood-red s.h.i.+p above, where these "kindly" men who were Paul's allies turned the instrument of death upon huddled, screaming folk--and laughed, no doubt, at such good sport.

I thought of many things. I was tensed one moment to throw myself upon the man; and an instant later I was searching my mind for some argument, some gleam of reason, with which I could tear aside the illusions that held him. I saw him cross the room where a radio stood, and he switched on the instrument for the news-broadcast service. The shouting of an excited voice burst into the room.

"The Reds have advanced," said the voice. "Their armies have crossed the Connecticut line. They are within ten miles of the American forces. The twenty-four hours of grace promised by the tyrant 'Paul'

was a lie. The battle is already on."

I saw the tall figure of Paul sink to its former stoop; the lameness that had vanished in the moment of his exaltation had returned. He limped a pace or two toward me.