The Bloodless Peril by Will Garth (Henry Kuttner)
Thrilling Wonder Stories, December, 1937
The Bloodless Peril by Will Garth (Henry
Kuttner)
Science evolves a superior plant kingdom when a war of the future is waged in the laboratory.
HE world map was dotted with
blood. In Berlin, Paris, New York,
T
Tokyo, tall buildings lay in
wreckage with corpses dotting the debris.
On the plains of the Argentine and the
Dakotas men and cattle lay swollen in
death caused by fungoid spores rained
down in bombs from war planes.
World war! A fight to the death
between the white and yellow races of the entire globe.
In the East the center of strategy
was Tokyo. Walled in by men and
machines, barricaded by a shell of
electronic force so tremendous that it
Thrilling Wonder Stories 2
drained the power resources of the Orient thick red beard and frosty blue eyes got up.
like water through a pipe, men moved pins
“Professor
Ryder
Storm.”
on maps with the result that millions more The big man boomed: “I present to
died.
the High Command my recently isolated
In the West the strategic center was
filterable virus known as Ryder’s Palsy,
Chicago. And there on the evening of April and its antidote. As you know, an ounce of third, 1988, a war council was gathered
it dropped in an exploding glass vial can between the High Command of the white
make imbecile, shivering wrecks out of all race, and its greatest scientists. The human beings within two square miles.”
meeting was for the purpose of
One after another the scientists of
coordinating science’s contributions.
the West rose. Finally a Frenchman got up Hugh Farrell, President of the and said in cold, incisive tones: United States and of the council, faced the
“I am, as you know, a botanist. I
gathering. Overhead could be heard the came to give my latest hybrid—a poison drone of guarding stratosphere planes. The flower which sprouts and grows rapidly,
air quivered with the backlash of the and the seeds of which can be dropped electronic force wall barricading Chicago behind enemy lines. But I feel that my
as Tokyo was barricaded.
contribution must be small indeed
But more than ionization made the
compared to the probable gift that could be atmosphere quiver. The yellow men were
made by the greatest botanist among us—
ahead in the war game and the whites knew Professor L. H. Hart, who for some strange it. The white race faced extinction.
reason”—the man’s voice dripped acid —
Farrell put the realization into “has not chosen to speak.”
words.
There was a hush. Farrell looked
“Occidentals, you have heard the
from face to face.
situation outlined. We must find new
“Professor L. H. Hart,” he said at
weapons of war, or we die. So we have
last.
called you scientists to ask if you have
There was no answer. Farrell’s
anything to offer. Anything—so it may be
white lips compressed.
turned to military usage!”
“Not present? What scientist dares
not to answer the call of his race?”
THERE was silence, then babel as the
“Professor Hart is present,” came a
scientists were swept with war frenzy. A
calm, sweet voice. “But Professor Hart
man leaped to his feet.
does not care to participate in plans of
“Herr Doktor Bruenig, ” Farrell war.”
acknowledged.
An almost physical shock rocked
“I offer my latest work,” shrilled
the house. Every eye turned to the person the man. “Chrome steel with molecules so
who was an eminent scientist and at the
arranged that no known projectile can same time a beautiful woman.
penetrate it.”
She got up slowly, tall, Junoesque,
Thunderous applause. Bruenig sat
striking in her plain white tunic.
down and two other metallurgists only a
“I came tonight,” she said, “hoping
little less famous rose and gave up secrets to find others like myself: scientists who representing decades of labor.
would refuse to lend their intellects to mass A big, barrel-chested man with a
murder. I find none. All are ripe for war. So
The Bloodless Peril
3
I shall stand alone. President Farrell and stratosphere midget flung itself westward, others of the High Command, I refuse to
with Laura Hart at the controls. After it lend my few achievements to the purpose
came Storm’s fast ship. The first sky-louse, of destruction.”
as the small fast vehicles were called,
There was pandemonium. Then showed lights, then sounded the secret code Ryder Storm of the flaming beard leaped
which cleared a sector of the electronic
up.
barricade. It flashed through, followed by
“One moment all! I believe the second sky-louse, and crossed the Professor Hart, in her disappointment at the Mississippi at eight hundred miles an hour.
bloodshed any woman would naturally
It cleaved the darkness, as its
hate, is speaking words she does not quite pursuer cleaved it, until the far-flung
mean—”
Rockies showed ghostly in the night. Then The woman’s soft voice cut in it hurtled toward a small flat space on the impersonally.
edge of a precipice.
“My thanks to Professor Storm for
It looked like a natural table-space,
his championship. But my words were and the cliff behind it looked unbroken.
final. I refuse to act in violence. With the Actually it was a minute landing field and permission of President Farrell, I shall cunningly concealed in the cliffside was a leave now.”
portal large enough to take the little ship in.
With the grace of a girl, she moved
Laura Hart gauged space beneath
calmly to the nearest exit. Names which no her by the Geiger meter which bounced
scientist should know were howled after
black light down and measured its rebound.
her, but her cool face showed no sign that She came to a perfect landing and jumped
she heard. The exit door closed behind her from the ship. Storm was already down. He and a dozen men leaped to their feet.
got to the cliff portal ahead of her.
“Stop
her!”
The woman faced him, cold, still.
“Jail her as an enemy alien!”
“Let me pass,” she said quietly.
“Make her cooperate!”
Ryder Storm stood aside, but
“We fight for our lives—and she
followed after her into the slowly opening refuses aid!”
cliff door. In a garden as lush as though Farrell’s upraised, weary hand grown in the tropics instead of in a cave forced silence.
where
no sunlight ever penetrated, he
“You don’t force women, even caught her arms and made her look at him.
great scientists, to your will. Anyway, you A great bush loaded perpetually with blue couldn’t force this one! I know Professor roses drooped beside them.
Hart. Rack and fire could not break her
“Laura! You’ve got to listen to
will.”
reason. What you said in council was
His tired eyes rested on Storm’s
unforgivable. You’d have been mobbed if
blue-blazing ones. He beckoned. Storm, it hadn’t been for your great name.”
red-bearded and red-tempered, a gorilla of She only looked at him, serene and
a man with the brain of a genius, came to cool as the northern snows. Storm shook
the platform and the president spoke briefly her in his exasperation.
to him....
“You don’t seem to realize what
this war means. It is the white race or the IN THE black night, over a darkened city, a yellow! One must die. Perhaps both, with
Thrilling Wonder Stories 4
Earth a ruined ball, if the war can’t end humanity, Storm, because I have recently
soon! And the only way it can be ended is discovered that man is in the twilight. His by quick victory. For us, please God!”
rule is almost over. He shall die out
“I will not join in war,” said Laura
anyway. And my knowledge of that makes
Hart.
me indifferent to his present fate.”
“You must! The white race needs
“How do you know? Can you read
your brain.”
the future?”
“No.”
“In this one respect, I can,” said
“For the sake of the race—of the
Laura calmly. “I know man is about done,
world—”
and I know the form of life that shall
“No!”
replace him as Earth’s ruler. Would you
“You would see human beings die
like to know, Ryder? The life that shall
by the million when some great discovery
supplant his is the life you have just
of yours might just possibly end the war in ridiculed. My silly flowers might
a week? You would see Earth reduced to
eventually rule the world!”
savagery?”
Storm stared open-jawed.
“Yes.”
“You’re
mad!”
“You mean that?” Ryder said
“Am I? You shall see what no one
hoarsely.
else has ever been shown. You shall see the
“I mean it. I don’t care what peaceful, calm, kindly form of life that is happens to humanity.”
going to take humanity’s place. No more
Storm drew a great breath. He wars, Ryder. No more stupid bloodshed. It released her arms.
will be a better world when humanity has
“I can see that my presence here is
finally destroyed itself. A peaceful, lovely futile. I had hoped our long companionship world with no greed or destruction in it.”
would mean something. Good-by.”
“Mad,” whispered Storm, his big
He turned. Laura looked after him
body seeming to shrink.
with unaccustomed color in her cheeks.
But the woman only smiled. “You
“Ryder—”
shall see.”
The big man turned quickly back.
She beckoned to a man in
“Well?”
mechanic’s clothes. “Roll the two ships in,
“I don’t usually explain my please. And then instruct the others to see decisions,” Laura said. “But I don’t like to that I am not disturbed for the next hour.”
see you go away looking—like that. So I
She led Storm through the
will, to you.”
marvelous subterranean garden to a great
“I can guess,” Storm snapped. metal door, which she opened with code
“You’re a woman before you’re a scientist.
and combination key.
You’re a milk-and-water pacifist. You’d
“No other eye but yours has ever
rather hide here—until an Oriental seen my secret laboratories, Ryder. No squadron blows your mountain down—and
other eye ever shall.”
play with your silly flowers, than help
“Unless you decide to work with
humanity.”
the High Command against the warring
yellow men,” said Ryder.
THE woman shook her head. “That’s not
Laura Hart’s shoulders rippled.
the reason, I am unconcerned with
“Small chance of that! I prefer
The Bloodless Peril
5
peaceful flowers to bestial humans.”
perfect flower—crested each. Then, like a Storm’s first impression in the great
bubble bursting, the flower drooped and
room behind the metal door was one of
withered. Up and down, like tides in the
color. Green predominantly, but splashes
ocean. Like waves. Only the waves were
also of every other color.
growing and dying plants!
His next was that he seemed to
“In the name of heaven—”
stand in the midst of a green and turbulent
“Evolution,” said Laura Hart.
sea which surrounded but did not envelop
“Growth and death in the span of three
him.
seconds instead of a full summer.”
His third was a realization that he
“It actually looks like that. But it
stood under a different kind of light than can’t be!”
any he’d ever seen before, and a sense of
“It is, Ryder. Years ago I learned to
sublime well being.
speed up life. I did it with plant life by Then he began to note details.
irradiating peat moss beds and the
The walls of the big chamber were
surrounding air with super-violet rays from lined with large glass tanks. In each was the lamps overhead, and by constantly
the flashing color, the rhythmic movements forcing into the growing-beds a mixture of that made him feel that he was in a nitrogen, oxygen and phosphates which is varicolored ocean.
my own secret formula. That forced the
He stepped toward the nearest tank,
growth faster and faster, culminating in
in which was the one color, green.
these beds where an entire plant generation He saw an undulating surface lasts a bit less than three seconds.”
halfway up the tank. It moved regularly, up
“Three seconds-—from seed
and down, taking about three seconds for
germination to death and decay?”
each rise and fall. Up, a brighter green;
“Exactly. Nearly a million
down, darker and duller; up again. Like a generations in a year. You see the future heaving little pond.
vistas revealed by that. In a year I can see In the bluish radiance of the locked
plant evolution as it will take place in the laboratory, Ryder felt a tendency to shiver.
next few hundred thousand years. I know
The tide in the tank had no meaning for
what plants will be like a half million years him, and thick glass was between him and
from now. And there is one plant—”
it. Yet he felt the subtle presence of danger.
Laura Hart’s voice was dreamy.
P
rophecy was mysterious in her blue eyes.
HOWEVER, Laura didn’t seem to feel that
“There is one plant which has
way. He looked at her, and went to the next evolved most powerfully and successfully
tank.
under my forced feeding. The plant that
In here was color, purple, flashing
shall rule the world! At the period in its on and off and rising up and down as the
evolution in which it is most perfect, I
green stuff had, with a cycle lasting only a stopped the forcing process so that now
few seconds.
specimens grow naturally as they will in
Then he started, for here the nature
the far future. Come, you shall see them.”
of the heaving stuff was coarser and he
She led Storm through the
could distinguish its broad flat particles.
laboratory, to a second door. He looked
Those particles were leaves. Plant leaves!
from side to side. Here was a tank in which Up they swelled. A purple blob—a
a flower new to botany produced a reddish
Thrilling Wonder Stories 6
bloom as large as a pumpkin every three
laboratory, twice hidden by great metal
seconds. There was a thing like a barrel
doors from intrusion.
which opened a veined lid like a trap