The Heat Ray by O Read online

  Air Wonder Stories, April, 1930

  Air Wonder Stories, April, 1930

  PART ONE (1938)

  pieces of phosphorus flared up in a blaze and were gone. Babel then tossed the wood to the same position, and intently observed the

  HE room was pitch dark, save for a

  action of the beam upon it. The result did not slender finger of light that issued from

  vary in the slightest degree from that of the T a tiny aperture in the ceiling and fell first test. The time of ignition, so far as could straight into a funnel-like receptacle on the he seen, was exactly the same.

  dimly seen table. Only the upper part of the Hardly able to contain his exuberation,

  receptacle, however, resembled a funnel; the the experimenter ran to the door of his

  lower part had the vague form of a moving

  laboratory and flung it open.

  picture projector. The room itself, so far as

  “Adams!” he called. “Adams!”

  could be made out in the very faint

  Twenty yards away across the lawn the

  illumination, was fitted up as a laboratory. It door of an outhouse opened, and a spectacled was crowded with chemical paraphernalia—

  head was thrust out.

  retorts, test-tubes and other articles that were

  “Adams!” reiterated Babel. “Come

  thrown roughly about, helter-skelter, on wall-here quick—I’ve something to show you!”

  racks, standards, and the littered floor.

  Obediently a lanky body followed the

  There was a movement beside the head into the open, and Samuel Adams, table, and for the first time it might have been undergraduate assistant to Babel, hurried

  seen that the room held a human occupant.

  across the grass and into the open portal of the Earnest, weary-eyed — Anton Babel was laboratory.

  engaged in an experiment.

  “What is it?” he asked, panting a little.

  His long, deft fingers drew back,

  Babel gently touched the projector.

  carefully and swiftly, a little slide on the out-

  “It’s this—a heat concentrator.”

  thrust muzzle of the mechanism on the table,

  “Yes? But what does it do?”

  while with the other hand he pressed a button

  “Watch!”

  on its nearer side. From that muzzle a pencil Babel was almost bursting with

  of warm, yellow light shot out, touched the

  exultant pride. It was with some difficulty that further wall, and then disappeared as the man he now placed the cylinder of iron in the

  released his pressure on the button. The air trough and applied his finger to the button.

  seemed suddenly very close and humid.

  The yellow ray sprang out, reached the

  Babel strode quickly to the other side

  cylinder and for a moment seemed to caress it of the laboratory and seized an L-shaped softly; then, before the astounded eyes of the trough about ten inches wide, with the upper two men, the heavy iron was melting, melting side of the L some five inches long. This,

  in a white-hot pool that spread, steaming, for together with a cylinder of iron, two pieces of an instant, then as swiftly hardened again.

  phosphorus, and a square of wood, he carried back to the table. He placed the trough upright ADAMS blinked, and rubbed his glasses.

  near the table’s edge, in line with, and nearly

  “That iron isn’t really melted, is it?” he

  three feet from, the muzzle of the projector. In cried. “It’s just a trick—” and before the

  the center of the trough he arranged the pieces stupefied Babel could prevent him, he thrust of phosphorus, then moved again to the his hand toward the metal—thrust it full into machine and repeated his former motions.

  the yellow beam.

  As before, the yellow beam flashed

  Adams let out one horrible cry, and the

  immediately into sight, and simultaneously the room was full of the odor of burning flesh.

  The Heat Ray

  3

  Babel caught him around the shoulders, but he swiftly aloft, its helicopter screws spinning did not fall, only stood there as if spellbound, madly. Then it disappeared in the sky.

  looking down at the blackened thing that had And so the Heat Ray came into

  once been his hand. Babel was nearly existence. Born in blood it was, and nourished hysterical.

  upon slaughter and destruction; and the evil

  “Hold on, Sam!” he half-screamed, record of its achievements was to grow and quaveringly. “For God’s sake, hold on! Can

  expand until a nation trembled before the

  you sit down? Can you sit down? If you can

  menace of its yellow, molten beam.

  sit down, I’ll call a doctor. Can’t you speak?

  Can’t—”

  “TELEGRAM for you, Ant!” The speaker was

  Adams jerked himself free, and in one

  Jesse Farnis, roommate of Anton Babel; the

  staggering rush was across the room. Words

  place was Stanford University, California; the now came in a flood from his lips.

  time, two o’clock in the afternoon.

  “It’ll never hurt anyone else! Damn

  Young Anton, just back in his room

  it—damn that thing! I’ll fix it!” He had caught after a tiresome two-hour session with

  up a wrench and was coming back toward the

  chemistry, looked up lazily.

  table. “Never burn anyone else!”

  “If you’re kiddin’ me to grab this

  Babel caught his upraised left arm and

  chair,” said he, “somebody’s gonna be carried held it.

  out of here....”

  “Stop it—drop that!” He was aware

  “Honest. It’s under my trig, there.

  that Adams did not hear him, and he spoke no Came about ten minutes ago.”

  more, devoting his energies instead to pulling

  “Give it here!”

  the wrench from the crazed man. There was a

  The other complied, and Anton tore

  confused tangle of arms and legs—from open the yellow envelope. He read: somewhere the wrench had come into his own

  hand and he tried to throw it over the other’s

  “Expect me four o’clock Wednesday.

  head; and somehow an upflung arm had Must see you. Will explain on arrival.

  deflected it and crashed it down....

  Babel stood alone and looked down at

  DAD.”

  the inert mass lying at his feet. Once he

  whispered, “Sam.” Then he laid a hand

  Anton Junior whistled.

  gingerly on the silent figure. Precariously

  “Somethin” troublin’ the old man,” he

  balanced, it rolled half over and into the light said. “He can’t have heard of my bustin’ up

  from the doorway. The head was split.

  the plane, can he? No—and besides, he

  A voice said “Murderer!” in Babel’s

  wouldn’t come clear across the continent for ear, and he swung around, feeling in that that. I don’t understand this—at all. H’m.”

  moment a detaining hand laid sternly on his

  “You’ll understand something else

  shoulder. There was no one. The yard and the again,” advised his friend, “if you don’t get laboratory were empty—save for that out of here. You’ve got an English conference shapeless thing....

  at this hour, young fellow. You told me

&
nbsp; Like some wraith, Babel tiptoed over

  yesterday to remind you about it.”

  to the table, caught up the projector and a

  “So I did,” said the other. He got up,

  portfolio of papers, turned, and went softly sighing dolefully, slouched down two flights out. A moment later came the roar of a of stairs and out onto a sidewalk. He walked powerful motor, and a small airplane went

  slowly, humming, for it was a glorious day.

  Air Wonder Stories

  4

  As Anton Junior went up the old right to be in that building; in fact, if certain concrete walk under the spreading trees, a

  members of an efficient Chicago police force couple of thousand miles east of him a man in had known of his whereabouts, they would

  shirt-sleeves was striding hurriedly down have quickly taken steps to see that he was Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Under one arm

  furnished more suitable quarters. For John

  he carried a portfolio; in the other hand was a Merton was a criminal; what is more, he was

  bulky bag. As he walked it could be seen that one of those called by fictionists “master

  a sheet of paper was slowly edging itself out minds.” His quiet insurance business was

  of the portfolio, moving inch by inch with the nothing but a clever mask to cover his more

  regular swing of the man’s arm.

  flourishing activities outside the pale of the A messenger boy came out of a cross

  law.

  street just in time to see the paper fall to the He read the paper through—and

  pavement. Being honest, he called out sharply instantly, complete as though it had been

  and touched the man on the shoulder. The

  conceived centuries before, a Napoleonic plan resulting phenomenon furnished him food for

  leaped into his fertile brain. It was to take him thought for some weeks.

  three years to put it into execution, and

  What the messenger boy had said was:

  eventually to cost him his life, but John

  “Hey, mister, you’ve dropped somethin’!” But Merton Graves neither knew nor cared for

  the man in shirt-sleeves evidently these things. Instead, because of the mental misunderstood him very seriously, for at these agility that was habitual to him, he began at words he turned around a fear-tortured face, once to build the framework for this structure and beholding a uniform—however small the

  of his thoughts.

  wearer—within grappling distance, he took

  We who spend our lives in offices, in

  swiftly to his heels, nor did his baggage seem stores, in factories, on farms, can have no

  to hamper him to any great extent in conception of the tremendous power wielded performing this athletic feat.

  by the head of one of our many modern

  criminal bands. His immense authority is

  THE boy watched him with some amazement;

  second only to that of the super-gangster who then stooped to pick up the document, but it controls the underworld of a whole city, and was suddenly gone. One of those little emperors of old might well have had reason to whirlwinds, which resemble miniature envy such a one. In him absolutism has tornadoes on hot days in the country, had

  reached its peak—there are no parliaments to picked it up and carried it, eddying and curtail his prerogative, no rebel people to rise twisting, through an open window of a tall

  up against him, only a few powerful

  office building fronting on the street. It henchmen to be subordinated. Graves was a dropped very nonchalantly upon the wide desk man of this type: a type almost entirely the which overlooked the window; and Fate, product of modern civilization. And it is not seeing that matters had come about as she had surprising, under these circumstances, that

  planned, left it there.

  John Merton found means to track down the

  Now John Merton Graves believed in

  writer of the paper that had fluttered into his Fate, and he accepted the paper in the same

  window.

  mood in which he had received a quiet hunch

  His ways of accomplishing this were

  to stay later than his usual wont in the big devious, innumerable. By a simple process of office building that fronted on Michigan elimination he discovered who had written the Avenue. As it happened, John Merton had no

  paper. He knew that only a few men in the

  The Heat Ray

  5

  world could have written it, and his mind

  lieutenants held that, since the scientist could disposed of them one by one. He alighted at

  not guess that he was being dogged, it was the length on Anton Babel. His men it was who

  part of discretion to wait until he came out first found the body of Adams, Babel’s again. They were not at all sure why Babel assistant, in the laboratory to which they had had come to Stanford University; even less

  gone to search for him; it was his men who

  sure why he had come to this exact spot.

  followed the trail of the scientist’s big plane Somehow, in spite of the intensive search of across the country to the dealer’s shop where John Merton Graves into the private life and it had been disposed of; and it was they who affairs of his quarry, he had not come upon the flew behind the worn out Babel in his new

  fact that Babel had a son. This error was

  plane, when the inventor came at last to destined, in time, to prove an important Leland Stanford University.

  element in later events.

  To be precise, it was not only John

  Graves won at last over his reluctant

  Merton’s men who were flying two miles comrades, and they formed a plan of battle.

  behind Anton Babel; it was also John Merton

  John Merton was to enter the house, to inquire himself, and two of his best lieutenants. No after Babel, to find him, to take that for which one could say of him that he ever failed in any they were searching. The other two were to

  undertaking because he entrusted important

  dismiss their first taxi, and, by taking

  work to men who were not capable of doing it.

  advantage of a near-by telephone booth, to

  Down to the landing field they went,

  order another, which was to be at the door of following Babel by half a minute. They were

  the fraternity house in five minutes. Then,

  not a half dozen steps away when they saw

  when John Merton came out with the booty, a

  him motion to the nearest taxi, and they convenient and almost untraceable method of plainly heard him give the address of his son’s escape would be ready for him.

  fraternity house. Babel entered the cab and it Graves opened the door of the house

  drove off; behind him the three men engaged

  and entered. Night was fast coming on, and in another car, promising their driver an extra the dusk he nearly walked into a student, who fare to follow the first conveyance. It was

  was lounging out of his chair to turn on the easily done. When Babel’s cab stopped at a

  lights.

  pretentious Greco-Roman mansion, the other

  “Pardon me,” said John Merton. “Did

  one was not fifty yards to the rear.

  Mr. Babel just come in?”

  The youth wrinkled his brows. “You

  STEPPING to the ground, the inventor strode

  mean Anton?” he asked.

  into the building, accosted the nearest student,

  “Yes.”

  and followed his guide to Anton Junior’s

  “Why, no, I didn’t see him.”

  room. Once inside, he sat down, sinking

  “Are you sure?” persisted Graves. “I

  completely out of sight in one of the soft

  was positive I saw him.”

  Morr
is chairs. He closed his eyes, for he was

  “Well, maybe you did. I’ll take you up

  very tired, having slept very little for four to his room, if you like.”

  nights.

  “Please.”

  Down below in their taxi, the three

  The two went up the stairs and to the

  conspirators debated the next course of action.

  open door of Anton’s room. Graves, seeing

  Opinion was divided: John Merton, unusually

  the head above the dim back of a chair, said, audacious, argued that it would be better to

  “Ah, I thought so,” with much satisfaction,

  keep in sight of Babel, while his two and gently but firmly closed the door behind

  Air Wonder Stories

  6

  him as he went in.

  and car lights. He turned bade to the room.

  Then he moved to the front of the

  “Do you know,” said he, “I think

  sleeping man and stood watching him intently.

  you’re bluffing. I don’t believe you would

  There was a suit-case by the side of the want the police up here any more than I would sleeper, but Graves did not touch it.

  myself.”

  Instead he whispered, “Mr. Babel!”

  “Oh, don’t you?” said John Merton,

  The figure stirred.

  softly, with an ugly little sneer on his lips.

  “Babel!” repeated John Merton. “No.”

  “Anton Babel!”

  Suddenly both of them heard running

  The sleeper was wide awake now; he