Джон Пристли - The Doomsday Men

“Yes, there’s the generator,” said MacMichael complacently, “but of course that’s not all. I’ve combined that with a cyclotron of an entirely new type, and much, much bigger than the ones those boys at Cal. Tech. are playing about with. In fact, you may say that most of the tower itself is a kind of cyclotron. Which ought to make you think a bit, Hooker. And not only that,” he continued, motioning his companion back up the stairs, “but as you may have guessed, I’m going to use a very high voltage indeed, something quite prodigious.”

“You’re on that power line from Boulder Dam, aren’t you?” said Hooker bluntly.

“Yes, my brother arranged that for me, and though of course it’s been an expensive business, it’s going to be worth it. But you’re still looking puzzled, though I notice not quite so incredulous as you were a few minutes ago.”

“Then I’m not looking what I feel,” said Hooker, in the same blunt tone. “I still feel you’re cracked. You’ve got one hell of an apparatus there, I’ll grant you that-it makes anything else I’ve seen look like a toy from a ten-cent store-”

“Oh, the whole thing, I can tell you, is very impressive, and I’m sorry I can’t show it to you in detail. But you know the size of this tower-and that’ll give you some idea of the scale I’m working on.”

“All right. It’s a honey. And so what?”

Paul MacMichael put his hands together with a little clap. Oh!-he was enjoying himself all right! Hooker concluded that probably the real reason why he had been brought up here was that MacMichael couldn’t resist showing off to a fellow physicist. His brothers, though probably sympathetic, weren’t really interested; and his colossal vanity demanded at least one scientist as a final audience. And now he clapped his hands together and looked delighted with himself. Hooker could not imagine what was coming.

“According to my calculations, Hooker, and I’ve given the matter very careful and long consideration-I’m very thorough, though I may not look it, because I don’t happen to be a dull little professor-when that little instrument you’ve just had a glimpse of is set in motion, the structure of the world’s surface will not stand the resulting strain.”

“Because you can bombard a pinch or two of your paulium, I suppose?” said Hooker, still trying to jeer hard.

“Not a pinch or two, my friend. I told you we’d been fortunate in our situation here. I’ve been working hard and I’ve managed to manufacture-a vulgar word for it, but you know what I mean-and accumulate far more than a pinch or two, or even a pound or two, of this most dangerous element. And I’ve worked out a very severe treatment for it-it’s quietly waiting down there-and unless my calculations are very faulty, the instantaneous and prodigious flight of dynatrons-I must use my own term, if you don’t mind-will be very disturbing to the structure of the upper levels of our earth, which was never devised to withstand such a sudden release of energy, energy gone mad, instantaneously breaking all decent bounds. What may happen to the earth’s core, I neither know nor care, but for everything outside that-unless, I repeat, my calculations are all wrong-I think I can promise instant dissolution. I’ve taken science as far as it will go in the life of mankind, Hooker. You’re listening-now, I’m glad to say with that oafish grin off your face-to the last and greatest of its great scientific figures.”

“I’m listening,” said Hooker, rather painfully, “to a madman. You wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“I would,” and he glanced at his watch, “and in an hour’s time, after we’ve all had some food, I, along with my two brothers, will explain why. Yes, we’ve agreed to justify ourselves. We’d hoped to do it on a much bigger scale, but that won’t be possible now. I’ll take you down. I must tell you, by the way, that there’s no possible chance of your getting away from here to-night, and that we have guards all over the place, who, reasonably enough, as I think you’ll agree, wouldn’t hesitate if necessary to kill you here and now. After you. No, no, that’s not politeness. You go first. And here, you see, waiting for us, is one of our men. You’ll find them all over the place, I’m afraid.”

Once back in the house, they separated, Paul joining his brothers, and Hooker being taken into a small room just off the entrance hall. Here he found both Malcolm and Jimmy Edlin, and food was brought for the three of them. While they ate, with no great show of appetite, Hooker grimly explained what he had recently seen and heard from Paul. He was still sceptical about the total result, he told them, but admitted that with such vast unknown forces being used deliberately to achieve the maximum of destruction, any horror might happen.

“But-but-hell’s bells!-” stammered Jimmy, who had listened open-mouthed, “we can’t just sit here and let three madmen blow everybody to smithereens. We must do something-now.” And he banged the table.

“Yes, but what?” asked Hooker.

“Oh-jumping Moses!-I dunno-but there must be something , and you ought to be the fellow to tell us what-you know about this electron business.”

While Hooker meditated, Malcolm remarked: “It seems to me the only possible thing we can do is to bust up the apparatus in some way, so that he has to postpone his attempt, and then meanwhile we’ll persuade the authorities-”

“I don’t believe much in those authorities,” said Jimmy. “While we’re trying to persuade them these MacMichaels are dangerous lunatics-and, mind you, from what I’ve seen and heard of ’em, they’d have us taped from the start, probably jailed before we’d begun our persuading-these three madmen would have time to take California to bits even with a pick and shovel.”

“It’s not as bad as that,” said Hooker, who was all seriousness now, “because I believe I could get some federal people to take my word for it that something was all wrong here. But that would take time. And in order to give ourselves time, the only thing we can do, as Darbyshire says, is to try and wreck his apparatus. We can’t cut off the electric power.”

“Why not? That’s an idea-if it’ll stop it.”

“It would cramp his style all right,” said Hooker, “though of course he’s probably storing up the juice right now. But how are we going to do it? We have to get outside first, and even then-those pylons are high and the cables are thick and tough. No, our best chance is to get inside that tower, with an axe or two.”

Jimmy sighed. “I wish we’d a few shots of dynamite. I’d show those boys something.”

“Whatever we do,” said Malcolm, looking rather pale and desperate, “we must do to-night. I believe it’s our last chance.”

“Brother John-and there’s a happy-go-lucky pal, believe me, Brother John-he told me they want to have a little chat with us, a nice cosy little party after dinner and a nice cosy little talk about why and how they’re going to blow hell of everything. Great suffering catfish!” Jimmy bellowed. “Can’t we do anything ? I’m getting as nutty as they are, just trying to think about it.”

Their presence was now demanded in the music room upstairs. It was, as Jimmy had said, quite a little party, and Malcolm thought as he surveyed it that the world could hardly ever have known a stranger party than this. The setting was nearly as odd as the people. Here they were among the Californian mountains and desert, but they might have been somewhere in Thuringia or Bavaria, for in this music room the MacMichaels had departed from the excellent old Spanish style and had attempted the old German or Austrian, a sort of Gothic with a touch of baroque, and a perfect background for one of Hoffmann’s wilder tales. It was a long room with many heavily carved rafters, a great Gothic fireplace, pointed tall windows, some carved wooden screens, and high-backed chairs covered with dark-brown hide. In the wall opposite the fireplace was a wide and richly ornamented alcove, with its floor raised about a foot above the rest of the room, and here there was a fine concert grand piano. Opaque, golden-tinted bulbs in the two wrought-iron chandeliers, together with the red-gold flickering of the great wood fire, gave the place a dim soft light and made it look even more mysteriously Gothic. There ought to have been green-coated foresters in attendance, and a miller’s beautiful daughter and a witch or two somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood. Malcolm stared at it all in amazement, and began to feel once more that ordinary reality was vanishing, to make way for fantastic dream stuff.