The Raid on the Termites Read online

  CHAPTER II

  _The Pact_

  "What are we going to do to-night?" asked Jim.

  Dennis looked quizzically at his big friend. Jim was pacing restlesslyup and down the living room of the bachelor apartment, puffing jerkilyat his eternal pipe. Dennis knew the symptoms. Though he hadn't seen Jimfor over a year, he remembered his characteristics well enough.

  Some men seem designed only for action. They are out of step with themodern era. They should have lived centuries ago when the world was morea place of physical, and less of purely mental, rivalry.

  Jim was of this sort. Each time he returned from some trip--to Siberia,the Congo, the mountainous wilderness of the Caucasus--he was going tosettle down and stop hopping about the globe from one little-known anddangerous spot to another. Each time, in a matter of weeks, he grewrestless again, spoiling for action. Then came another impulsivejourney.

  He was spoiling for action now. He didn't really care what happened thatevening, what was planned. His question was simply a bored protest at atoo tame existence--a wistful hope that Denny might lighten his boredom,somehow.

  "What are we going to do to-night?"

  "Well," said Denny solemnly, "Mrs. Van Raggan is giving a reception thisevening. We might go there and meet all the Best People. There is alecture on the esthetics of modern art at Philamo Hall. Or we can see atalkie--"

  "My Lord!" fumed Jim. Then: "Kidding aside, can't you dig up somethinginteresting?"

  "Kidding aside," said Dennis, in a different tone, "I have dug upsomething interesting. We're going to visit a friend of mine, MatthewBreen. A young man, still unknown, who, in my opinion, is one of ourgreatest physicists. Matt is a kind of savage, so he may take to you. Ifhe does--and if he's feeling in a good humor--he may show you somelaboratory stunts that will afford you plenty of distraction. Comealong--you're wearing out my rugs with your infernal pacing up anddown!"

  * * * * *

  Matt Breen's place was in a ratty part of the poorer outskirts of town;and his laboratory was housed by what had once been a barn. But placeand surroundings were forgotten at sight of the owner's face.

  Huge and gaunt, with unblinking, frosty gray eyes, looking more like anarctic explorer than a man of science, Matt towered over the average manand carelessly dominated any assembly by sheer force of mentality. Heeven towered a little over big Jim Holden now, as he absently shookhands with him.

  "Come in, come in," he said, his voice vague. And to Denny: "I'm busy asthe devil, but you can watch over my shoulder if you want to. Gotsomething new on. Great thing--though I don't think it'll have anypractical meaning."

  The two padded after him along a dusty hallway, up a flight of stairsthat was little more than a ladder, and into the cavernous loft of theold barn which had been transformed into a laboratory.

  Jim drew Denny aside a pace or two. "He says he's got something new.Isn't he afraid to show it to a stranger like me?"

  "Afraid? Why should he be?"

  "Well, ideas do get stolen now and then, you know."

  Denny smiled. "When Matt gets hold of something new, you can be sure thediscovery isn't a new kind of can-opener or patent towel-rack that canbe 'stolen.' His ideas are safe for the simple reason that thereprobably aren't more than four other scientists on earth capable of evendimly comprehending them. All you and I can do--whatever this may turnout to be--is to watch and marvel."

  * * * * *

  Matt, meanwhile, had lumbered with awkward grace to a great woodenpedestal. Cupping down over this was a glass bell, about eight feethigh, suspended from the roof.

  Around the base of the pedestal was a ring of big lamp-affairs, thatlooked like a bank of flood-lights. The only difference was that whereflood-lights would have had regular glass lenses to transmit lightbeams, these had thin plates of lead across the openings. Thick copperconduits branched to each from a big dynamo.

  Matt reached into a welter of odds and ends on a bench, and picked up atube. Rather like an ordinary electric light bulb, it looked, save thatthere were no filaments in the thin glass shell. Where filaments shouldhave been there was a thin cylinder of bluish-gray metal.

  "Element number eighty-five," said Matt in his deep, abstracted voice,pointing at the bluish cylinder. "Located it about a year ago. Last ofthe missing elements. Does strange tricks when subjected to heavyelectric current. In each of those things that look like searchlights isone of these bulbs."

  He laid down the extra tube, turned toward a door in the near wall, thenturned back to his silent guests again. Apparently he felt they weredue a little more enlightenment.

  "Eighty-five isn't nearly as radioactive as the elements akin to it," hesaid. Satisfied that he had now explained everything, he started againtoward the door.

  As he neared it, Dennis and Jim heard a throaty growling, and a viciousscratching on the wooden panels. And as Matt opened the door a bigmongrel dog leaped savagely at him!

  * * * * *

  Calmly, Matt caught the brute by the throat and held it away from him atarm's length, seeming hardly to be aware of its eighty-odd pounds ofstruggling weight. Into Jim's eyes crept a glint of admiration. It was afeat of strength as well as of animal management; and, himselfproficient in both, Jim could accord tribute where it was due.

  "You came just as I was about to try an experiment on the highest formof life I've yet exposed to my new rays," he said, striding easilytoward the glass bell with the savage hound. "It's worked all right withfrogs and snakes--but will it work with more complex creatures?Mammalian creatures? That's a question."

  Denny forbore to ask him what It did, how It worked, what the devil Itwas, anyway. From his own experience he knew that the abstraction of anexperimenter insulates him from every outside contact. Matt, herealized, was probably making a great effort to remain aware that theywere there in the laboratory at all; probably thought he had explainedin great detail his new device and its powers.

  Vaguely wrapped in his fog of concentration, Matt thrust the snarlingdog under the bell, which he lowered quickly till it rested on thepedestal-floor and ringed the dog with a wall of glass behind which itbarked and growled soundlessly.

  Completely preoccupied again, Matt went to a big switch and threw it.The dynamo hummed, raised its pitch to a high, almost intolerablekeening note. The ring of pseudo-searchlights seemed in an ominous sortof way to spring into life. The impression must have been entirelyimaginary; actually the projectors didn't move in the slightest, didn'teven vibrate. Yet the conviction persisted in the minds of both Jim andDennis that some black, invisible force was pouring down those conduits,to be sifted, diffused, and hurled through the lead lenses at the dog inthe bell.

  * * * * *

  Thrilled to the core, not having the faintest idea what it was they wereabout to see, but convinced that it must surely be of stupendous import,the two stared unwinkingly at the furious hound. Matt was staring, too;but his glance was almost casual, and was concentrated more on the glassof the bell than on the experimental object.

  The reason for the direction of his gaze almost immediately becameapparent. And as the reason was disclosed, Dennis and Jim exclaimedaloud in disappointment--at the same time, so intense was their namelesssuspense, not knowing they had opened their mouths. It appeared that foryet a little while they were to remain in ignorance of the precisemeaning of the experiment.

  The glass of the bell was clouding. A swirling, milky vapor, not unlikefog, was filling the bell from top to bottom.

  The dog, rapidly being hidden from sight by the gathering mist, suddenlystopped its antics and stood still in the center of the bell as thoughovercome by surprise and indecision. Motionless, staring vacantly, itstood there for an instant--then was concealed completely by the rollingvapor.

  But just before it disappeared, Jim turned to Denny in astonishment, tosee if Denny had observed what he had; namely, that the fog
seemed notto be gathering from the air penned up in the bell, but in some strangeand rather awful way to be exuding _from the body of the dog itself_!

  * * * * *

  The two stared back at the bell again, neither one sure he had beenright in his impression. But now the glass was entirely opaque. So thickwas the vapor within that it seemed on the point of turning to a liquid.Inside, swathed in the secrecy of the fleecy folds of mist--what washappening to the dog? The two men could only guess.

  Matt glanced up at an electric clock with an oversized second hand. Hisfingers moved nervously on the switch, then threw it to cut contact. Thedynamo keened its dying note. A silence so tense that it hurt filled thegreat laboratory.

  All eyes were glued on the bell.

  The thick vapor that had been swirling and crowding as if to forceitself through the glass, grew less restive in motion. Then it began torise, ever more slowly, toward the top.

  More and more compactly it packed itself into the arched glass dome, thetop layers finally resembling nothing so much as cloudy beef gelatin.And now these top layers were solidifying, clinging to the glass.

  Meanwhile, the bottom line of the vapor was slowly rising, an inch at atime, like a shimmering curtain being raised from a stage floor. At lastten inches showed between the pedestal and the swaying bottom of thealmost liquid vapor. Jim and Denny stooped to peer under the blanket ofcloud. The dog! In what way had it been affected?

  Again they exclaimed aloud, involuntarily, unconsciously.

  There was no dog to be seen.

  * * * * *

  With about fourteen clear inches now exposed, they looked a second time,more intently. But their first glance had been right. The dog was gonefrom the bell. Utterly and completely vanished! Or so, at least, theythought at the moment.

  The rising and solidifying process of the vapor went on, while Dennisand Jim stood, almost incapable of movement, and watched to see whatBreen was going to do next.

  His next move came in about four minutes, when the crowding vapor had atlast completely come to rest at the top of the dome like a deposit ofopaque jelly. He stepped to the windlass that raised the bell, andturned the handle.

  Immediately the two watchers strode impulsively toward the exposedpedestal floor.

  "Wait a minute," commanded the scientist, his eyes sparkling with almostferocious intensity. The two stopped. "You might step on it," he added,amazingly.

  He caught up a common glass water tumbler, and cautiously moved to theedge of the platform. "It may be dead, of course," he muttered. "But Imight as well be prepared."

  Wonderingly, Jim and Dennis saw that he was intently searching everysquare inch of the pedestal flooring. Then they saw him crawl, like astalking cat, toward a portion near the center--saw him clap thetumbler, upside down, over some unseen thing....

  "Got him!" came Matt's deep, fuzzy voice. "And he isn't dead, either.Not by a long way! Now we'll get a magnifying glass and study him."

  Feeling like figures in a dream, Jim and Dennis looked through the lenswith their absorbed host.

  * * * * *

  Capering about under the inverted tumbler, like a four-legged bug--andnot a very large bug, either--was an incredible thing. A thing with asoft, furry coat such as no true insect possesses. A thing with tiny,canine jaws, from which hung a panting speck of a tongue like no bugever had.

  "Yes," rumbled Matt, "the specimen is far indeed from being dead. Idon't know how long it might exist in so microscopic a state, norwhether it has been seriously deranged, body or brain, by thediminishing process. But at least--it's alive."

  "My God!" whispered Dennis. And, his first coherent sentence since thephysicist had thrown the switch: "So this--_this_--is the overgrownbrute you put under the bell a few minutes ago! This eighth-of-an-inchthing that is a miniature cartoon of a dog!"

  Jim could merely stare from the tumbler and the marvel it walled in, tothe man who had worked the miracle, and back to the tumbler again.

  Denny sighed. "That thick, jellylike substance in the top of the bell,"he said, "what is it?"

  "Oh, that." The miracle worker didn't lift his eyes from the tumbler andthe very much alive and protesting bit of life it housed. "That's thedog. Rather, it's practically all of the dog save for this small residueof substance that clothes the vital life-spark."

  * * * * *

  Jim dabbed at his forehead and found it moist with sweat. "But how is itdone?" he said shakily.

  "With element eighty-five, as I told you," said Breen, most of whoseattention was occupied by a new stunt he was trying: he had cut amicroscopic sliver of meat off a gnawed bone, and was sliding it underthe glass. Would the dog eat? Could it...?

  It could, and would! With a mighty bound, that covered all of a quarterof an inch, the tiny thing leaped on the meat and began to gnawwolfishly at it. The effect was doubly shocking--to see this perfectlittle creature acting like any regular, full-sized dog, although astiny as a woman's beauty spot!

  "Marvelous stuff, eighty-five," Matt went on. "Any living thing, exposedto the lead-filtered emanations it gives off when disintegratedelectrically to precisely the right degree, is reduced indefinitely insize. I could have made that dog as small as a microbe, even sub-visibleperhaps, if I chose. Curious.... Maybe the presence of eighty-five inminute quantities on earth is all that has kept every living thing fromgrowing indefinitely, expanding gigantically right off the face of theglobe...."

  * * * * *

  But now Dennis was hardly listening to him. A notion so fantastic, sobizarre that he could not at once grasp it fully, had just struck him.

  "Listen," he said at last, his voice so hoarse as to be almostunrecognizable, "listen--can you reverse that process?"

  Matt nodded, and pointed to the viscous deposit in the dome of the bell."The protoplasmic substance is still there. It can be rebuilt, remoldedto its original form any time I put the dog back in the bell and let theparticles of eighty-five, which are suspended in the vacuum tubes,settle back into their original, inert mass. You see, there is such aclose affinity--"

  Dennis cut him short almost rudely. It wasn't causes, marvelous thoughthey might be, that he was interested in; it was results.

  "Would you dare ... that is ... would you like to try that experiment ona human being?"

  * * * * *

  Now for once the inventor's entire interest was seized by somethingoutside his immediate work. He stared open-mouthed at Dennis.

  "Would I?" he breathed. "Would I like ..." He grunted. "Such a question!No experiment is complete till man, the highest form of all life, hasbeen subjected to it. I'd give anything for the chance!" He sighedexplosively. "But of course that's impossible. I could never get anyoneto be a subject. And I can't have it tried on myself because I'm theonly one able to handle my apparatus in the event that anything goeswrong."

  "But--would you try it on a human being if you had a chance?" persistedDenny.

  "Hah!"

  "And could you reduce a human being in stature as radically as you didthe dog? For example, could you make a man ... ant-size?"

  Matt nodded vigorously, eyes fairly flaming. "I could make him evensmaller."

  Dennis stared at Jim. His face was transfigured. He shook with nervouseagerness. And Jim gazed back at Dennis as breathlessly and as tensely.

  "Well?" said Dennis at last.

  Jim nodded slowly.

  "Yes," he said. "Of course."

  And in those few words two men were committed to what was perhaps thestrangest, most deadly, and surely the most unique, adventure the worldhas yet known. The improbable had happened. A man who lived but fordangers and extraordinary action, and a man who would have gambled hissoul for the scientist's ecstasy of at last learning all about a hiddenstudy--both had seen suddenly open up to them a broad avenue leading tothe very pinnacle of the
ir dreams.