The Heat Ray by O Read online

  footsteps on the stair. The quick slap of soles lifted one hand as if for defense.

  striking carpet was accompanied by a tuneless,

  “Don’t arrest me,” he said, weakly and

  happy whistle.

  hopelessly. “I didn’t mean—I couldn’t help—

  “Anton!” cried Babel, and he took a

  ”

  step toward the door.

  John Merton made two movements

  GRAVES laughed. “That’s all right,” said he.

  simultaneously. He jerked a heavy automatic

  “Brace up, now, and we’ll talk. I’ve no more from his pocket, fired—and leaped to the light love for the police than you have.”

  buttons. He fired again, twice, in the sudden

  “You

  mean—”

  darkness, and the soft-nosed bullets made a

  “I’m not in the habit of beating around

  horrible, thudding sound.

  bushes,” said John Merton, pulling up a chair Anton Junior opened the door on a

  to face the other, “and I’ll not do it now. What sight that he was never to forget. The room

  I want is your heat-concentrating contrivance, was lighted by a soft beam of moonlight that and its formula, and any other papers that may came through an uncurtained window, and in

  deal with it. If you’re decent about it, I’ll offer the very middle of the beam, appearing as if a thousand for the whole thing. If you’re not, detached from its body, was a human head,

  why—” Graves spread his hands wide— “I’ll

  lips drawn, teeth clenched, the whole a picture have to turn you over to the police.”

  of beastliness incarnate. He saw only dimly

  “Then—it’s

  blackmail?”

  the rest of the body; perceived a pistol held in

  “Come, come,” impatiently, “I told one hand and a suitcase dangling from the you I’d offer a thousand. That’s generous—

  other; then there was a lancing flame, and he considering that I could get it for nothing if I saw only darkness ... and darkness....

  really wanted to.”

  Babel thought a moment. Then he

  spoke, slowly: “I don’t know how you learned PART TWO (1939)

  about my invention, and I don’t know who

  you are, but I do know this—that you can’t

  have it!” Graves shrugged. “Just as you say. I COPY of a letter sent by Professor Matthew

  think, though, that I’ll go down and phone

  E. Winton of the Howland Institute of

  police headquarters.”

  Technology, to his brother, Jamison Winton:

  Babel, getting to his feet, walked

  slowly over the window and stood, looking

  “My dear Brother:

  out. It was pitch dark outside, and from all Today I have taken one of the most

  over the campus little flickers of light decisive steps in my whole career. In writing gleamed—house windows, and street lamps,

  to tell you of it, I will give you the exact

  The Heat Ray

  7

  details, as nearly as I can remember them, and plane, so that the two mirrors hold the

  you may judge for yourself of the wisdom of

  sunbeam quite well. But this is not all.

  this action. If you think it wise, you will of course accept the proposition that I intend to

  “BY operating a slide, one of the mirrors is state further on.

  tilted up and the beam shoots out beneath it. In

  “Yesterday morning my man brought

  some manner (I haven’t yet read the whole of in a middle-aged gentleman, very well his formula) he manages to secure an immense groomed, and with that prosperous look that

  concentration of that beam, so that is has

  most successful men have. He told me his

  nearly fifty times its original heat. This beam, name was John Merton Graves. I faintly concentrated as it is, can be thrown out remembered having heard the name before,

  through a projector and turned on any object and I spoke of this. He grinned and answered: desired. You may doubt this—as I did—but

  ‘My name is often in the newspapers—but

  that object acts as it would if it were only a very little good is ever written of me’.”

  few feet from the intense heat of the sun—in

  “When I questioned him as to his other words, it either melts or instantly burns seemingly paradoxical answer, he replied: ‘I up—depending, of course, on the type of

  am a gentleman carrying on an extra-legal

  material of which the object is composed. The profession.’ You may judge my surprise, my

  range of this weapon is somewhat limited, for dear brother, when he said that. Instantly I it loses a great deal of its heat through contact jumped to the conclusion that he intended to with the air, but the one that Graves had is rob me, and I told him I regretted it very

  able to ignite wood at two hundred yards.

  much, but he would hardly find a dollar in the This, with only a momentary flash. If it were house.

  held on for some seconds, iron or steel would

  “‘You pain me, Professor Winton,’ he

  be melted, granite blocks cracked into tiny

  said. ‘I’m not that much of a piker, I’m not chips, and so on.

  going to rob you at all; rather, I’ll enrich you.’

  “You can see what possibilities there

  “Said I: ‘I don’t know what you mean,

  are in this thing. With larger glasses

  sir.”

  constructed and installed on vessels, airships,

  “Then he explained. I give you my

  and other war conveyances, an enemy could

  word, Jamison, my head positively swam with

  be wiped out almost before a shot was fired. It the things he told me, though I’m by no means practically makes guns extinct. And I think I a man easy to surprise or awe. It seems that he can find a way to eliminate its only fault—its has stolen an invention from a man—I forget

  uselessness at night—by perfecting a storage the name, something like Bibil, I think it tank for sunlight with which the thing would was—that works on the principle of a giant

  be equipped.

  burning-glass. A beam of sunlight enters the

  “This was not all that Graves told me.

  top of the contrivance, and is reflected He has very little scientific knowledge downward from there by a series of mirrors

  himself, and he wishes some skilled electrical until it is imprisoned between two of them.

  engineer, and a trained scientist who can

  This, you know, has always been theoretically interpret the inventor’s notes, to make more of possible, but because of defects in the mirror-these heat concentrators for him. What he will glass, could not be accomplished practically.

  use them for I don’t know, but from some

  This inventor, however, has perfected a type hints that he dropped I gathered that he plans of glass that is flawless, or, one might say, a to transform his gangs of rum-runners, drug-type whose reflecting surface is a perfect sellers and the like into a band of air bandits,

  Air Wonder Stories

  8

  who, using fast planes and armed with this

  the law enforcement officers had been

  heat ray, will prey on air and land shipping.

  congratulating themselves on the success of

  He was careful to tell me that there would be their efforts to suppress criminality, for the no danger for the makers of his heat ray number of crimes committed had rapidly projectors, as they could easily explain, in diminished. The editor of more than one

  case they were arrested, that they were magazine of large circulation had ventured to ignorant as to the purpose of the machines

  comment
on the increasing of the law-abiding they were building.

  spirit among the citizens; it was orated on by

  “In short, he offered me a princely

  legislators, and the President devoted a goodly salary to find a mechanic and make these

  amount of space to it in his annual message to projectors for him. As you know, I have often Congress. This advance, together with the

  wished for more money to carry on some

  increase of invention and knowledge, seemed

  expensive researches, and the proposition to herald a new Golden Age of man. But the seemed to me to be an answer to my wish.

  quiet was only the lull before the storm, the Scruples of conscience? As to that, I feel no momentary pause before the cyclone.

  guilt. I am not committing a crime if I make John Merton Graves had devoted the

  those machines, and though I may help winter months of that year to the organization another to ... well, I have long ago ceased to and building up of his various forces. He

  believe in eternal fires. Have I made it plain rapidly trained good crooks to be better pilots; that I accepted?

  or, when this was not possible, he bought

  “When Graves mentioned an electrical

  pilots outright from the numerous passenger

  engineer, my mind leaped at once to you. Will and freight companies. He secured airplanes—

  you take this chance and become rich, or do

  the best, of types that had not yet been placed you intend to stay in a rut all your life? I think on the market. He slyly kidnaped Loren

  I have made myself sufficiently clear as to our d’Antorut, the young French aircraft engineer, work, and if you accept, Jamison, you must

  and as a result it was John Merton’s planes

  write me at once. If you don’t, I trust you to that first appeared with the tiny helicopter keep the contents of this letter entirely to vanes on the tip of each wing, a development yourself.

  of this same d’Antorut. He established a base in Amberton, somewhere in the hinterland of

  Very truly yours,

  Illinois, and moved enough Chicago rum-

  runners and bootleggers to that little town to Your brother, Matthew.”

  reduce the Windy City’s crime record

  considerably. He spent millions in money,

  months in labor. And then, at the end of

  PART THREE (1941)

  March, he finally looked over his work and

  pronounced it good. ...

  The first blow was struck on April

  DURING the year 1940, the people of the

  second, when his ships, communicating by

  United States had become suddenly aware for

  radio telephone, forced down the big Toledo, the first time that something more than the

  route-ship from Chicago to Detroit, and took conventional, hide-in-the-dark bandit had twenty thousand dollars in gold from her. Two established himself in their fair land. This days later they met the Edsel Ford, which revelation came as a complete surprise to opened fire on them from automatic machine-them. Before April of that year the clergy and guns mounted in her middle engine rooms. It

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  9

  was the opinion of watchers that the passenger cabin plane, sending out long stabs of yellow ship might have won out, had not the big

  light which slashed hither and thither about gasoline tanks, mounted in the wings, the helpless ship. The result—inevitable, as exploded from reasons unknown. Two the man on the ground well knew—was that hundred men, delegates to a business the latter’s gasoline tanks blew up, and the convention in Detroit, were either killed or plane, a hopeless, burning wreck, plunged

  fatally injured when the huge plane burst into earthward.

  myriad bits of duralumin. Not without creating Some few moments after the bandit

  a furor were some of the leading business men had disappeared in the distance, the pilot came in the country wiped out.

  out of his hiding place and walked over to the Then rumors began to spread that a

  flaming ruin of his ship. With water from a

  new weapon was being used by the bandits.

  nearby creek he succeeded in quenching what

  Just how the rumors began is hard to say.

  was left of the fire, and he managed to draw Reports of farmers, at work near-by when the part of the wings and fuselage away from the Edsel Ford crash occurred, stated that they main body. These he turned over and over

  had observed flashes of intense yellow light again, until he found a tiny hole burned in one vomiting from the attacking planes. all-metal aileron, as if a red-hot poker had Undoubtedly the boasts of certain of Graves’

  been thrust through it.

  gangsters had reached the ears of the police,

  “This,” he said to himself, “is not as it

  and possibly these whispers had spread further should be.” Then he walked away toward the

  than they were intended to. Be that as it may, smoke of a farm chimney with a chaos of

  the rumors did spread, and when a small cabin thoughts rioting in his brain: “Burned hole.

  plane belonging to Associated Mining, How? Heat. How? Oxygen torch? No. Heat ...

  fortunately carrying only pay-checks, was heat ... heat ... By Gad! Then that’s their hailed by one of the bandits, the cabin plane weapon—a heat ray! Well, by Gad!”

  took to earth at once, although it was a very

  “And yet,” he said aloud, “that doesn’t

  fast ship. Its pilot made no attempt at mean anything. We know there’s lightning, resistance, for he realized that the checks but that doesn’t prevent it from hitting trees. . .

  would be worthless to the bandits. Moreover,

  .”

  he was consumed with curiosity as to whether The young pilot was Anton Babel,

  or not the rumors of a strange weapon were

  Junior.

  true, and, while preparing for a landing, he Three months went by, and the perils

  formulated a plan to discover the truth. So he of the air grew daily. No one, from the

  had hardly brought his machine to a halt billionaire in his palatial air yacht to the before he set his stick a trifle back, opened the commoner out for an airing in his two-seater, throttle wide, and plunged through the cabin was entirely free from danger. No one could

  door and to the ground. Then he lay behind a foresee the next move of the air bandits; no shrub and watched his stout ship speed one could guard his possessions so carefully unmanned across the sand and rise into the air that he could prevent them from being seized as steadily as though a hand were upon the

  in the next swoop of those ruthless pirates.

  controls.

  Police forces were doubled, tripled,

  quadrupled. But day by day it became more

  BUT the bandit plane appeared little evident how far behind the times the officers disconcerted by this maneuver. Hawklike, it

  of law enforcement were. Bandits flew circles swooped down upon the slowly-climbing around the slow police patrols; they amused

  Air Wonder Stories

  10

  themselves by dropping straight down onto

  order,” said the young man. “It is. I did. I police landing fields, and rising again, before was.”

  their enemies’ ships, unequipped with

  Mr. Crawford looked at his card again.

  helicopter vanes, could gain flying speed.

  “Very well. You take the Langley to

  Police began to be afraid to open fire on the New Orleans this afternoon. Two o’clock.”

  bandits, knowing that the retort would be “I do

  what? ”

  swifter, more unerring, more deadly, than all

  “I know,” said Mr. Crawford, melting

  the machine guns ever invented could send

  as much as his dig
nity would allow, “it really out. Many a patrolman, remembering that he

  is—ah—hard on you. A new pilot, new

  had a wife and family, turned his back where route— But we haven’t any choice. It’s you or he should have turned his revolver barrel; no one. Dinle got in two hours ago—tired out, many a police commissioner forgot his duty,

  says he won’t take another ship out for a

  to think of his life. And the effects of this month. Beale and Watson absolutely refuse to whole corrupt, cowardly system began to fly over the well-known center of the whole spread. A general deterioration was observed bandit gang, and two other pilots are in the in public morals: dope-peddling, bootlegging, hospital. As I say, we have no choice.”

  and prostitution gained, while the church and

  “We-l-l-l, if that’s it, far be it from me

  other beneficent institutions lost influence, fell to object. I’ll take her down to New Orleans, off; lobbies and trusts began to appear in

  and regret that I’ve only one life to give to my politics and business; crime and vice walked corporation. You don’t mind if I sleep till

  unrebuked in high places. . . .

  two? I can’t get used to this Chicago noise at night, and I’m groggy right now.”

  IN the offices of the Middlewest Aircraft

  “No—not at all,” said Mr. Crawford,

  Corporation, Robert H. Crawford,

  hastily. “Sleep all you wish. I’ll have a taxi superintendent in charge of transportation of call for you at one-thirty.”

  that corporation, told his secretary to show in

  “Until then,” said Thompson, yawning

  a young man who had just been taken on as a

  in Mr. Craword’s face. He threw himself

  pilot. The young man took a seat in front of down on the comfortable leather davenport in the tennis court of mahogany that Mr. Craw-the waiting room, reflecting on the fact that he ford called his desk.