Эрл Гарднер - The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner

Sid Rodney examined the cage. The door was tightly closed, held in place with a catch. There was no possible loophole of escape for those white rats. They had been caged, and the cage held them until, suddenly, they had gone into thin air.

There was a touch on his shoulder.

“What is it, Sid?”

Sid Rodney had to lick his dry lips before he dared to trust his voice.

“Look here, Ruby, did you ever hear of absolute zero?”

She looked at him with a puzzled frown, eyes that were dark with concern.

“Sid, are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, yes! I’m talking about things scientific. Did you ever hear of absolute zero?”

She nodded.

“Yes, of course. I remember we had it in school. It’s the point at which there is absolutely no temperature. Negative two hundred and seventy-three degrees centigrade, isn’t it? Seems to me I had to remember a lot of stuff about it at one time. But what has it got to do with what’s been going on here?”

“A lot,” said Sid Rodney. “Listen to this:

“Dangerfield disappears. He’s located in a room. There’s no such thing as escape from that room. Yet, before our eyes — or, rather, before our ears — he vanishes. His watch is stopped. The ink in his fountain pen is frozen. His clothes remain behind.

“All right, that’s an item for us to remember.

“Then next come these white rats. I’m actually looking at them when they cease to move, dwindle in size and are gone, as though they’d been simply snuffed out of existence.

“Now you can see the ice film still on the water there. You can see what the wires of the cage did to my fingers. Of course, it happened so quickly that these things didn’t get so awfully cold... but I’ve an idea we’ve seen a demonstration of absolute zero. And if we have, thank Heavens, that dastardly criminal is dead!”

The girl looked at him, blinked her eyes, looked away, then back at him.

“Sid,” she said, “you’re talking nonsense. There’s something wrong with you. You’re upset.”

“Nothing of the sort! Just because it’s never been done, you think it can’t be done. Suppose, twenty years ago, some one had led you into a room and showed you a modem radio. You’d have sworn it was a fake because the thing was simply impossible. As it was, your mind was prepared for the radio and what it would do. You accepted it gradually, until it became a part of your everyday life.

“Now, look at this thing scientifically.

“We know that heat is merely the result of internal molecular motion. The more heat, the more motion. Therefore, the more heat, the more volume. For instance, a piece of red-hot metal takes up more space than a piece of ice-cold metal. Heat expands. Cold contracts.

“Now, ever since these things began to be known, scientists have tried to determine what is known as absolute zero. It’s the place at which all molecular motion would cease. Then we begin to wonder what would happen to matter at that temperature.

“It’s certain that the molecules themselves are composed of atoms, the atoms of electrons, that the amount of actual solid in any given bit of matter is negligible if we could lump it all together. It’s the motion of the atoms, electrons, and molecules that gives what we see as substance.

“Now, we have only to stop that motion and matter would utterly disappear, as we are accustomed to see it.”

The girl was interested, but failed to grasp the full import of what Rodney was telling her.

“But when the body started to shrink it would generate a heat of its own,” she objected. “Push a gas into a smaller space and it gets hotter than it was. That temperature runs up fast. I remember having a man explain artificial refrigeration. He said...”

“Of course,” interrupted Sid impatiently. “That’s elemental. And no one has ever reached an absolute zero as yet. But suppose one did? And remember this, all living matter is composed of cells.

“Now, this man hasn’t made inanimate matter disappear. But he seems to have worked out some method, perhaps by a radio wave or some etheric disturbance, by which certain specially prepared bodies vanish into thin air, leaving behind very low temperatures.

“Probably there is something in the very life force itself which combines with this ray to eliminate life, temperature, substance. Think of what that means!”

She sighed and shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Sid, but I just can’t follow you. They’ll find Dangerfield somewhere or other. Probably there was some secret passage in that room. The fact that there were two here indicates that there must be others in that room.

“You’ve been working on this thing until it’s got you groggy. Go home and roll in for a few hours’ sleep — please.”

He grimly shook his head.

“I know I’m working on a live lead.”

She moved away from him.

“Be good, Sid. I’ve got to telephone in a story to the rewrite, and I’ve got to write some sob-sister articles. They will be putting out extras. I think this is all that’s going to develop here.”

Sid Rodney watched her move away.

He shrugged his shoulders, turned his attention to the empty cage in which the white rats had been playing about.

His jaw was thrust forward, his lips clamped in a firm, straight line.

Captain Harder lay on the hospital bed, his grizzled face drawn and gray. The skin seemed strangely milky and the eyes were tired. But the indomitable spirit of the man kept him driving forward.

Sid Rodney sat on the foot of the bed, smoking a cigarette.

Captain Harder had a telephone receiver strapped to his left ear. The line was connected directly with headquarters. Over it, he detailed such orders as he had to his men.

Between-times he talked with the detective.

The receiver rattled with metallic noises. Captain Harder ceased talking to listen to the message, grunted.

He turned to Sid Rodney.

“They’ve literally tom the interior out of that room where we found the empty clothes,” he said. “There isn’t the faintest sign of a passageway. There isn’t any exit, not a one. It’s solid steel, lined with asbestos, backed with concrete. Evidently a room for experiments... Oh, Lord, that shoulder feels cold!

“Hello, here’s something else.”

The telephone receiver again rattled forth a message.

Captain Harder’s eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets.

“What?” he yelled.

The receiver continued to rattle forth words.

“Well, don’t touch a thing. Take photographs. Get the fingerprint men to work on the case. Look at the watch and see if it stopped, and, if it did, find out what time it stopped.”

He sighed, turned from the mouthpiece of the telephone to stare at Sid Rodney with eyes that held something akin to panic in them.

“They’ve found the clothes of Arthur Soloman, the banker!”

Sid Rodney frowned.

“The clothes?”

The officer sighed, nodded, weakly.

“Yes, the clothes.”

“Where?”

“They were sitting at the steering wheel of Soloman’s roadster. The car had skidded into the curb. The clothes are all filled out just as though there’d been a human occupant that had slipped out of them by melting into the thin air. The shoes are laced. One of the feet, or, rather, one of the empty shoes is on the brake pedal of the machine. The sleeves of the coat are hung over the wooden rim of the steering wheel. The collar’s got a tie in it... Just the same as the way we found Dangerfield’s clothes.

“One of the men found the roadster and reported. The squad that handled the Dangerfield case went out there on the jump...”