Murray Leinster

“ They shouted as an act of faith that the space-ships were of human origin, which was quite probable, and that their seizures of unrelated objects and now the destruction of a small town were acts of war, though intended only to terrify the nations later to be subjugated.
When Earth was convinced of its helplessness, the nation responsible would reveal itself as the master of the planet. And the way to defeat this plan was to bomb, now, the nation responsible. Blast it with atomic bombs from one end to the other. Destroy it utterly. ”

“ While Bud grew panicky at the danger his children had been in, Murfree drove out the woods-road. He was going shopping for something Bud Gregory could turn into a weapon against the seven ships which circled the earth, in space.
The world armed—quite uselessly. And now that there could be no doubt of the artificial nature of its new satellites, or that they contained crews of highly intelligent beings—quite possibly men—all the world struggled to enter into communication with the mysterious craft. ”

“ Murfree flung himself down and was instantly asleep, dreaming vague nightmares of continuing to put together devices he did not understand with the constant fear that he was doing them wrongly.
Bud Gregory woke him, shaking him roughly, and Bud's face was scared and drawn.
"Mistuh Murfree, suh!" he panted. "Wake up! The radio says big trouble's loose! Those space-ships, suh, they're killin' folks by thousan's! And they' a-comin' this way, suh! We got to git started!"
A tinny voice came in the manhole of the absurd tank in which Murfree had worked himself into a stupor of fatigue. ”

“ No device ever made by men could take the racking strains created by all its separate parts vibrating wildly, trying fiercely to tear themselves apart. No control-board could work, no relay operate, no system of wire connections remain intact. And—no detonating device could possibly remain unexploded.
There was a sudden, violent, soundless flame. It was not in mid-air but in mid-space, perhaps a hundred miles higher than the wabbling thing in which Murfree and Bud Gregory rode the skies. ”

“ But we daren't. Because in giving the world the power to roam among the stars, we'd have to give them the power to slaughter each other by millions. We can't make a space-ship without making a death-ray, Bud. So we can't have space-ships. It's too bad!"
"Yes, suh," agreed Bud, uncomprehending. "It sure is. Uh—ain't that the river that goes in past my shack?"
Murfree nodded. He let the space-going tank settle down to earth. It had been aloft for nearly four hours. Sunset was near. The wallowing, clumsy object landed on the weedy grass before the shack in which Bud Gregory lived. ”

“ Like the pressor-apparatus it worked on water, and also like it, it fanned out. At its striking-point it would pull on water-particles, but it would be so attenuated by its fanning-out that gravity could safely hold all liquid down. The pull would not stir water, but the ship itself. It would pull the craft in the direction of the beam—as long as the beam pointed toward moisture.
The ungainly craft, in fact, could rise to almost any height above earth, and could pull itself around the earth's curvature, but the higher it rose, the less efficient its drive would be. ”

“ Then Bud Gregory paled. "Migawsh, suh! Anybody you turned it on would come apart!"
"It'd be a death-ray," said Murfree savagely. "And it's very possible—it's extremely possible—that the space-ships we just smashed were made by men, and that they got the necessary tricks from somebody whose brain works like yours does, who can make dinkuses that will do anything that's wanted. ”

“ A nation on earth equipped with such weapons as space-ships and atomic bombs might cherish notions of world conquest. But the fate of Germany and Japan was warning against too great ambition.
The seven objects might have been sent up as targets, as tests of the ability of other countries to combat such threats. If the rest of the world was helpless against them, why, then their makers might unmask themselves and attempt world rule. If they were vulnerable, their origin would remain a mystery.
Murfree drove back with the papers. As he reached the house, Bud Gregory came shambling out, yawning. ”

“ Bud Gregory's son Tom held the radio close by the opening so that its blaring was audible within.
"—space-ship has been playing tractor-beams slantingly on the countryside as it sweeps on its way. Columns of earth and stone leap upward, miles high, then fall back to earth as the beam is cut off. They're crushing everything they fall on. This ship has already practically wiped out Phoenix, Arizona, and Denver has been hard hit! Every inhabited place is being blasted, either by being jerked skyward to crash down again, or buried under thousands of tons of falling stuff...." ”

“ And at least one beam could be changed from the widest of wide-angle pressor-tractor-action beams to the narrowest of pencil-rays.
"I'm heading east," said Murfree. His voice sounded queer even to himself. He was not prepared for space-navigation save as the constructor of this ship. He could not think grandiosely of a moon-flight, or even of a jaunt to Moon, which was sure and entirely practical. The wallowing water-tank he skippered was now no more than four hundred miles from earth.
"We've got to watch the ground," he said hoarsely. ”

“ The U.S. Signal Corps announced the discovery of a new satellite of Earth in the latter part of July, and newspapers everywhere broke out in a rash of pseudo-scientific comment. The new satellite had been picked up by Signal Corps radars, in the course of experiments to work out a technic for detecting guided missiles at extreme range, while they were still rising in their high-arched flight beyond the atmosphere. The radars picked up indications of an object of appreciable size at a distance of four thousand miles, which—the moon-echo aside—was a record for radar detection. ”

“ Either the crews of the space-ships were aliens to humanity with no knowledge of mankind, or else they were men and conducting a ruthless war of nerves and an exhaustive test of the ability of the world outside their nation to defend itself. ”

“ If a space-fleet of some alien race had grim designs upon Earth, the danger was great. But if men had made the ships and sent them secretly up into the heavens, they meant more than danger. They meant doom. ”

“ Murfree said evenly, "Better not, Bud. It occurs to me that the gadgets they've got are pretty much like yours. Maybe there's another man who thinks like you do—who can make things like your dinkuses. Only he's working for men who want to kill people. You, for instance. Especially you. Maybe he'll be in one of the other five space-ships. Better hunt for them, Bud. We'd both feel safer!"
Bud Gregory searched space beyond the padded walls of the space-going water-tank. ”

“ And whether their crews were men or monstrous creatures from beyond the abyss of interstellar space, their existence and silent menace produced terror and panic and—men being what they are—fury amounting almost to despair.
Murfree was busy. Very busy. But he realized that the danger of the seven invisible space-things was more important than any of his private affairs, and he knew the only man on earth who might be able to do something about that danger. He boarded a plane for the West Coast to see Bud Gregory. ”

“ I don't aim to work myself to death. I'm perfectly satisfied just the way I am with just what I got!"
"And I," said Murfree, "am pretty well satisfied with the gadget you've got in that boat. It's part of what's needed, anyhow. I'm going to Seattle to buy some stuff for you to work with. And while I'm gone you might think about this!"
He passed over the rest of the papers. But he pointed to one from Seattle. Alone among the newspapers of the United States, the Seattle Intelligencer did not feature the carrying-off of an air-liner to space as its lead story. ”

“ A bit of iron at one end of a curiously-shaped coil made the device draw to itself all iron in the direction in which it was pointed. But a bit of gold in the same place made it draw gold. Lead, or stone or water or glass, anything placed as a sample at one end of the coil made even the most minute distant particle of the same substance move toward it with an irresistible attraction. Murfree was using that device, now, in Ocean Products, Inc.'s Maryland-coast establishment, and Dr. Murfree was getting much more than ten dollars a day out of it. ”

“ Radars kept constant watch on the seven newly-discovered satellites of Earth. Some fourteen hours before the newspapers closed their forms, the nearest of the seven had dived down from its normal height of 1500 miles to a bare 500, hardly beyond the thinnest part of the earth's atmosphere.
It went hurtling across the North Atlantic at that height. Then, simultaneously, a Newfoundland-to-Eire transatlantic plane ceased to communicate, and the radars reported that some object was rising from the earth's surface as if to join the nearest satellite. ”

“ Short waves, long waves, micro-waves, frequency-modulated waves, amplitude-modulated signals, every conceivable type of radiation signal, was beamed at the small, invisible, hurtling objects as they swung madly about the globe. ”

“ Murfree told him, "and try to forget all this. All the ambitions men ever had, we can realize, but we daren't, because men have the ambition to kill and enslave other men, too."
"Yes, suh, that's right," said Bud. He added hopefully. "You won't want me to make no more dinkuses, suh?"
"Never again!" said Murfree. "But you're rich, and your children, whenever they want to be. I won't bother you, though."
"Shucks!" said Bud cordially. "You ain't bothered me none, suh. You pay me ten dollars a day, and I can set and drink beer and eat hawgmeat and not worry about nothin'. ”

“ Murfree came back from Seattle. Bud Gregory dozed contentedly in a chair tilted back against a tree before his door. When Murfree waked him to discuss what was needed, Bud looked uncomfortable but stubborn.
"Mistuh Murfree," he said doggedly, "you're a good friend of mine. I reckon you' the best friend a man ever had. You pay me ten dollars a day, rain or shine, and I'm settin' pretty. I'm satisfied. I don't want no more money. ”

“ He spun the cardboard disks. He found two more very readily—and they blew up—but he had to search for over an hour before he located the last. They did not see the last explode, but Bud was sure.
"When the beam's pullin' and pushin' somethin' big and solid," he explained, "it's got a different feel. You can tell when they blow, suh. We go home now, suh?"
Then Murfree agreed to descend. But it had taken a long time to attend to the duties incumbent upon the two-man crew of a flying hot-water tank. The air inside the cramped and crowded space was foul. ”

“ Earth prepared to fight, with empty hands. Elaborate plans of defense were suggested, of course. It was proposed to manufacture bombs in vast quantities and so sprinkle the earth with them that any sized objects would prove fatal to a space-ship which approached them. ”

“ A lift and a drive a lot stronger than the boat has. And some weapons. I want you to make them for me."
Bud grinned.
"Tryin' to make me work, suh? Then just let the money go hang, suh! I got ten dollars a day, and if that stops I got near three hundred I ain't used yet. I don't have to worry!"
With a shrug Murfree turned away. "That's what you think," he said drily. "All right! I'm turning your money over to you. All of it. You handle it! ”

“ Two of Bud Gregory's children might very well be in a boat, and fishing, even two hours after sundown. But a boat in which one went fishing should not be floating some forty or fifty feet above treetops at least two miles from the nearest water. Murfree would have credited himself with sudden lunacy, but that he knew Bud Gregory. ”

“ They were artificial objects, doubtless blackened so they could not be seen against black space, traveling on courses which allowed them to survey and perhaps to threaten every spot on earth every day. ”

“ Twin cardboard disks spun on their bearings. Something detonated in space, a thousand miles away. When every separate particle of brass in a complicated mechanism was violently attracted and then violently repelled, and then every particle of aluminum, and iron, and carbon and every other commonly used material was separately subjected to the same process in very fast succession, why something had to happen. ”

“ You'll be up against it because you're an employer and you've got to keep your social-security records straight and the fees paid. Within two weeks you'll be working night and day paying fixes and clearing up red tape, and you'll go to jail if you don't. ”