Murfree

“ 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. ”

“ Bud Gregory rolled unhappy eyes at him.
"Honest, Mr. Murfree, I didn't know they was goin' to act like this," he said miserably. "They offered me a hundred dollars and ten dollars a day to soup up their sedan."
The car sped along the incredibly populated roadside. There were people everywhere. When cities empty, people have to go somewhere. Small towns swarmed. Villages overflowed. Even the highways were lined with groups of people with picnic-blankets and blanket shelters. Murfree rubbed his head to clear it, and closed his eyes at the anguish which came of the movement. ”

“ It was dark. The car had come back for Murfree and he had sent it away again. He paced up and down. He chewed his fingers. To know of certain doom awaiting one's country and to have as one's ally a man who can do anything that can be imagined in the way of physics—and much that cannot be imagined—and not to be able to think of anything either possible or impossible to avert the doom—it was maddening.
Bud Gregory grinned amiably.
"Mr. Murfree, suh, have you thought of anything? If you ain't maybe we'd better set an' eat." ”

“ He was untutored and almost illiterate, while Murfree had spent years in the study of just such science as this should represent. So Murfree helped as a naked savage might help to set up a radio-beam, in absolute ignorance of even its basic principles.
"Like I told you," said Bud Gregory in a troubled voice, "this new outfit is like that there thing that makes that—uh—pile. Only this don't make a hollow horn. This here is solid. It won't only stop them—uh—neutrons from goin' through a place. It'll stop 'em dead in their tracks, right where they are when it hits. It's gonna make a lot of heat." ”

“ 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. ”

“ But he was the most important man in the United States. He could have earned any conceivable sum if he had wanted it. But he didn't. He only wanted to sit in the sun.
"You've got to figure out how to beat this trick!" said Murfree, very pale. "In two weeks the babies that are conceived will begin to be freaks. In a month there won't be any babies conceived. In two months people will begin to die!"
"You' a good friend o' mine, Mr. Murfree," said Bud Gregory amiably. ”

“ 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'. ”

“ He added, "There aren't any detectives with me."
Bud Gregory shambled beside him, frowning.
"Listen, Mr. Murfree," he said uneasily, "I don't want no truck with sheriffs and policemen. I don't even want to square nothin' with 'em. I just want to get along without workin' myself to death, not botherin' nobody and nobody botherin' me."
Murfree ushered him into a tavern opposite the race-track where the souped-up racers ran.
"The point is that somebody is bothering you," said Murfree. "And me. And everybody else. ”

“ Bud Gregory had actually sat up at night to make the outfit for his own protection and the mass of tangled wiring Murfree carried.
They reached a spot where they could look into the valley beyond. It was literally a valley of death. There was nothing alive in it. Not one blade of grass, not one shrub, not one bird or insect, not even a bacterium. Everything was dead.
And a swirling, humming column of heated air rose skyward, snatching up deadly dust from a quarter-mile patch of earth that was quite red-hot, now. Every grain of that dust was the most deadly stuff known to men. ”

“ It vanished into the darkening night sky with a thin shrill whistling of wind about itself.
"I adjusted every pusher-beam to repel everything I could," said Murfree grimly. "It'll push away from water and air and iron and brass and aluminum and rock, and every sample of every material we had. It'll run away from the sun. It'll flee from every planet and every meteorite, and if there's any space-ship anywhere it will push away from that. It'll hunt for the farthest place in all the universe from any other particle of matter! It will isolate itself forever." ”

“ He had barely two hundred dollars in the world, and this man was not Bud Gregory. But Murfree was sure he was on the right track. A car that went impossibly fast and made impossible turns. His own car, of course, was imaginary, but he looked worn-out and dusty and very convincing. ”

“ Murfree. I told you about it. All the little hunks in metal that stuff gets in, have to move the same way. I made it make my car climb hills, and then I fixed it so I could make them little hunksa stuff act as brakes, too. They could even push the car backwards, if I wanted 'em to. And I—been makin' a livin' bettin' on a fella I fixed the dinkus on his racin'-car. That—that fella—I had his car fixed so it couldn't turn over, either."
Murfree listened in an unnatural calm. He knew all this, of course. Bud Gregory was not a genius. ”

“ But Murfree knew that he had to hunt for Bud Gregory. He had to!
"Somebody's got to do it," he told his wife defensively. "And after all, I'm the only person he'll work with."
His wife waited.
"It's lunatic," said Murfree, "but what can I do? The whole country is getting more radioactive. The normal count has gone up ten times! It goes up in waves which start on the Pacific Coast and move east. There's no rise in Europe, Asia, South America or anywhere else. It isn't dangerous yet but it's heading that way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He looked enormously concerned.
"Nobody can live to get to it to turn it off," said Murfree, grimly. "Maybe a plane can drop a bomb that will blast it. But it'll be weeks before I can make myself believed. Meanwhile there's poison being poured into the air. People are dying right now.
"For five miles around that thing you made, there's not even a blade of grass alive. The people in the cabins for ten miles around are dying and don't know why. And that horn-shaped mass of ore and earth inside your field is full of more flying neutrons than any atom pile ever was. ”

“ If we'd shot you we mighta had some trouble gettin' away ourselves."
"What's the idea?" asked Murfree drearily, "Are you spies, or just plain traitors?"
"Huh!" scoffed the man in front. "You talk like the movies! We're just honest guys pickin' up a livin' how we can. Your friend there, has got a little trick that'll be useful to us. He can fix up a car to go faster, stop shorter, turn sharper and have more pick-up—"
The beefy man, at the wheel, growled at him. ”

“ Every human being on earth was at the mercy of the unseen things in the skies. And there was not only no way to fight, there was nowhere to flee.
Every spot on earth came under the gaze of at least one of the space-ships at least once each day. There was no single human being who could not be snatched away to strangulation in emptiness at the will of whatever creatures manned the satellite space-ships hurtling round the earth.
It may be that Murfree, who knew what Bud Gregory could do, and Bud himself were the only two people on earth who did not feel a raging and infuriated despair. ”

“ A vapor like gasoline, burning without enough oxygen, turns to solid soot. Radioactive vapor, transforming itself, would become solid particles of dust, which would attract water-vapor and other particles and settle to the earth.
"Somebody's doing it!" said Murfree, grinding his teeth. "Somebody who wants to rule the earth! They know they've got to knock us out first, before they can try to build up their own nation to jingoism again! So they've started to murder us! Every one of us!"
Bud Gregory spoke contentedly. ”

“ Ten miles away—the car ran perfectly from the first, in proof that there was no longer a neutron-flood to ionize the air—ten miles away they saw rain falling upon smokily flaming hillsides. Lightning flashed among dark clouds. Water poured down. Not even a forest fire could survive such a downpour.
They went back to Brandon. It took them a day and night of steady driving, alternating at the wheel. Bud Gregory had little to say the whole way back. But when Murfree stopped the car before the repair shed and let him out Gregory grinned uncomfortably. ”

“ But it was no more impossible than welding a water-pump shaft in its place or eliminating all friction from a frozen-tight motor so that it could be started again, or, say looking at a Geiger Counter and understanding how it worked without the least idea of what it could be used for.
Murfree had a small camera and dutifully took pictures without attempting to go closer. He had no hope that the pictures would turn out. The plates were surely fogged by the radiation. He bent his cadmium plate into a half-cylinder and did his best to make sure of what he now unreasonably knew. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The noise of the radio cut off abruptly. The manhole door was closed. Instantly thereafter the unwieldy tank lurched violently. Murfree felt a sensation like that in a swiftly ascending elevator. And, still dazed from his heavy slumber, he saw through a port that the earth dropped swiftly away below.
CHAPTER IV
Struggle in Space
In the wildest imagination never was such a space-ship pictured as went wabbling up from before Bud Gregory's shack by Puget Sound. It was shapeless and ungainly. It bulged with its layers of exterior insulation. ”

“ Poured into the air at sufficiently high level—doubtless carried up by a column of hot air—finely-divided dust and deadly gas could travel for hundreds of miles before touching earth. Apparently they did. Where they touched earth, nothing could live.
Not only did living things die after breathing in the deadly stuff but the ground itself became murderous. To walk on an area where the ground emitted radioactive radiation was to die. To breathe the air exposed to those rays....
Murfree went desperately on in his search for the impossible source of the invisible carriers of death. ”

“ But the fog hung about him like a cloak, and when the moon cast aside the vapors, it was in a distant silver sheen illumining the far reaches of the valley. Only when its light summoned forth a brilliant and glancing reflection on a lower level, as if a thousand sabers were unsheathed at a word, he recognized the proximity of the river and came to a sudden halt.
"Whar is this fool goin'?" he demanded angrily of space. "To the graveyard, I declar', ez ef I war a harnt fur true, an' buried sure enough. An' I wish I war. I wish I war." ”

“ Wyatt was continually repeating to himself, though when he sprang through the door he could scarcely draw his breath because of some mysterious, invisible clutch at his throat.
He sought to ascribe this symptom to the density of the pervasive fog without, that impenetrably cloaked all the world; one might wonder how a man could find his way through the opaque white vapor. It was, however, an accustomed medium to the young mountaineer, and his feet, too, had something of that unclassified muscular instinct, apart from reason, which guides in an oft-trodden path. ”

“ Once he came to a halt, from no uncertainty of locality, but to gaze apprehensively through the blank, white mists over a shuddering shoulder. "I wonder ef thar be any other harnts aloose ter-night, a-boguing through the fog an' the moon," he speculated. Presently he went on again, shaking his head sagely. "I ain't wantin' ter collogue with sech," he averred cautiously.
Occasionally the moonlight fell in expansive splendor through a rift in the white vapor ”