The Silver Menace Page 5

  CHAPTER V.

  Gerrod watched Davis walking hastily down to the little summerhouse,and laughed.

  "Evelyn," he said, still chuckling, "you have truly the wisdom of theserpent and the gentleness of the dove. Davis falls in love with Nita.Nita's father forbids Davis the house, and then you resurrect a collegefriendship and invite Nita down here so their little romance can becompleted. Why are women so willing to go to so much trouble for meremen?"

  Evelyn slipped her arm in her husband's, and smiled up at him.

  "Well-l-l," she said in mock hesitation, "perhaps this time it wasbecause Davis is so handsome I wanted to keep out of the temptation offalling in love with him myself."

  Gerrod looked after Davis. He had vanished inside the littlevine-covered summerhouse, where Nita was waiting. Evelyn lifted herlips invitingly, and Gerrod responded to the invitation instantly. Bothof them laughed together.

  "As a husband of some six months' standing," said Gerrod with severity,"I protest against this undignified conduct you encourage me tocontinue."

  Evelyn rubbed her cheek against his.

  "We really ought to be getting back to work on those silly animals,"she said reluctantly. "It's beginning to look rather serious. It may bejust panic, though."

  "Don't believe it." Gerrod was in earnest. "They've covered all thebeaches with their sticky slime, and they're creeping inland. Therivers are choked with them, and floods are already threatening tobecome destructive."

  "But it's so silly!" protested Evelyn. "Just because some littleanimalcule decides to multiply and keep on multiplying----"

  "We have to get to work," finished Gerrod. "Come on into thelaboratory."

  They went into their workshop arm in arm. Evelyn and her husband workedtogether upon the problems in which they were interested, and indeedEvelyn was nearly as capable a physicist as was Gerrod. Her suggestionshad helped him immensely when he and Davis battled with the coldbombs Varrhus had used in his attempt to bring the whole earth underhis sway. Now they were laboring together to try to find a means ofcombating the silver menace that threatened the world.

  "You're sure there's no exaggeration in the fear that the silveranimals will actually grow up on solid ground?" asked Evelyn as sheslipped into the long white apron that covered her from head to foot.

  "Not much chance," said Gerrod, shaking his head. "I went down toDavis' aviation station last week. They've had to abandon the hangarsnearest the water. The slimy stuff has covered the whole beach andis still creeping up. The smell is over everything, and the animalsgrow and grow. They've reached one of the buildings and crawled up thesides. They plastered the walls with a thick coating and even coveredthe roof. Height doesn't seem to bother them. They'll creep up astraight wall, and nothing seems to stop them."

  "Well, they don't grow very fast," said Evelyn slowly. "There's stilla lot of time left to fight them in."

  "Don't believe it. They covered the Atlantic in three months. How longwill they take to cover the continent?"

  "You make me shiver," protested Evelyn.

  "I'm doing a little shivering myself," said Gerrod grimly. "Every riverin the United States is choked up with them, and they grow upstreamwithout the least difficulty. They're creeping up the banks of thestreams just as they creep over the beaches. The banks of the Hudsonare a mass of silvery slime that's still expanding."

  Evelyn began to look a trifle worried.

  "But how far can they go from the rivers--from water?"

  "They have gone three miles inland," said Gerrod grimly, "along theCarolina coast, where the shore slopes down gently to the sea. Up inMaine there are places where they have only covered a quarter of amile. In both places, though, they are still creeping inland."

  He picked up one of the test tubes.

  "Something must be done to stop them. How does the cauterizing seem towork?"

  "Not at all; it doesn't even make them pause."

  Since their discovery that the jelly formation was caused by the tinyanimalcules fusing themselves into one organism, Gerrod had thoughtof searing the edge of the silvery mass with a hot flame. The heathad baked and killed the animalcules for a distance of some two orthree inches into the mass, and he had hoped that by that meanstheir growth might be stopped. They had simply absorbed the searedportion into themselves as food, however, and grown on outward asbefore. Their means of reproduction made such a proceeding perfectlypossible. Under favorable conditions of moisture and food, each ofthe animalcules multiplied itself by as many times as the number oftentacles it possessed. The animals themselves were tiny, jellylikecreatures incased in a spherical, silicious shell from dozens of holesin which fat, restless tentacles protruded. Normally the tentaclesprovided the microscopic creature with the means of securing its food.Gerrod had discovered now that it was by those tentacles that theyreproduced. One of the tentacles began to swell and grow a round spotat the tip. A shimmering, silvery shell appeared around the swollenportion. Within an hour from the appearance of the shimmer thatshowed that the protecting shell had been formed tiny, fat, jellyliketentacles protruded themselves from openings in the newly formed shell.With almost incredible rapidity the creature grew to the size of itssingle parent. Then the connecting tentacles snapped and a new silveryanimalcule prepared to reproduce in its turn.

  "And Davis is just as oblivious of the Silver Menace as if it did notexist," remarked Gerrod suddenly some time later, apropos of nothing.

  Evelyn smiled indulgently and did not answer. She was trying to findif it were not possible that upon exhaustion of the food supply theanimalcules would attack each other and so destroy themselves. She hadsealed up small quantities of the evil-smelling jelly in test tubeswhere they could not possibly find fresh supplies of food. When theavailable nourishment was exhausted, however, they simply joined theirtentacles and remained absolutely at rest, their tiny forms immobile.They did not starve, because they were using up no energy in movement.She had kept some of them for over a week in just this state ofinactivity, but on being supplied with fresh water they resumed theirinterrupted multiplication with feverish energy.

  On the beaches the slimy, silvery menace lay in absolute repose.No tremor of waves disturbed its placidity. The whole sea as far asthe eye could reach was a mass of utterly quiet silver, reflectingperfectly the cloudless sky. Only at the edges of the mass wasany movement visible, and that movement was a slow but inexorablysure creeping inland. Whole colonies of houses were garbed in theglistening, shining horror, and the jellylike stuff filled the roadsbetween. And over all hung the foul, musklike odor as of slime dredgedup from the bottom of the ocean.

  The sun shone down perpetually from a clear blue sky now. Its fierceheat had dried out the upper surface of the silver sea into a shiningmass like glistening parchment, and the breezes that blew were hotand dry. There was no longer evaporation from the sea, and the windsthat blew to the shore from the ocean were like blasts from an ariddesert. At night, too, the ocean no longer exerted its former functionof moderator of the climate. The sun's heat was no longer absorbed bythe water by day, to be given up to the breezes again at night. Thewinds of the ocean by day were hot, dry, foul-smelling blasts, and atnight were chill and penetrating. Already the crops--which threatenedto be the last ever garnered on the planet--were failing from lack ofrain, and there was no relief in sight. It looked as if that part ofthe population which was not overwhelmed by the slimy masses of theSilver Menace would face death by starvation. Some few enterprisingfarmers had gone to the shore and filled wagons with the horrible jellyto spread on their farms as fertilizer. The whole world knew that theSilver Menace was simply a mass of microscopic animals, and the farmersthought they would provide their plants with animal humus by plowingthe glistening stuff underground.

  They soon learned their mistake. What little moisture remained inthe earth was absorbed by the greedy animalcules, who multipliedexceedingly. The farmers learned of their error when they tried tocross their fields. The ground had become spongy and e
xuded quantitiesof the Silver Menace at every pore. The crops were covered with aglistening film of the horrible, sticky stuff, which weighted down andfinally buried the green plants under its shining masses.

  The mantle of shining horror flowed inland, always inland. It rosein thick sheets from the now solidified rivers and crept up thebanks, overwhelming everything that came in its way. It clambered uptall trees, and then dripped down in long, thick ropes from theirbranches. Formless things, shining of silver, showed where forests hadcome in its way. Gangs of men were working desperately on the docksof New York, shoveling the ever-climbing masses of slimy mess backinto the Hudson. Already the drains of the city were solid masses ofevil-smelling liquid, and the gutters were choked with their effort torelieve the streets of the trash that was being deposited upon them.The hydrants were flushing the streets regularly now, and the fireand water departments were growing gray in their efforts to keep anyfragment of silvery stuff from reaching the water-supply pipes. Ifthat occurred the city would be helpless. As it was, the authoritieswere beginning to realize that they could not keep up indefinitelythe fights against the ever-encroaching horror, and plans were beingsecretly prepared by which the entire population could be shipped awayfrom the town when the Silver Menace could be fought off no longer.

  And all this time, when the government of the greatest city in theworld was recognizing the hopelessness of the city's plight and waspreparing means to abandon the tall skyscrapers to the evil-smellingslime that would creep upon all the buildings and fill air the streetswith glistening horror; all this time Davis and Nita spent gazing intoeach other's eyes, oblivious to everything but each other.

  The world breathed a sigh of relief when the government announcedwith a fanfare of trumpets that it had found--not a way of destroyingthe Silver Menace, but a means of checking it. Tall board fenceswould be built and covered with lubricants, with greases, and otherwater-resisting substances. The Silver Menace would creep up to themand be helpless to clamber over them. The world would protect itselfby means of dykes a thousand times more extensive than those ofHolland. Men set to work frantically to build these defenses againstthe creeping silver flood. Five hundred miles of fencing was completedwithin a week, and ten thousand men increased the force of laborersday by day. Men stood behind these bulwarks and watched the slowlyapproaching silver tide. It crept up to the base of the oily, greasyboarding. It checked a moment.

  Then it slowly and inexorably began to climb them. The lubricants were_absorbed as food by the microscopic animals, who flowed over the talldefenses and resumed their slow advance over the whole earth_!