The Lanson Screen by Arthur Leo Zagat

Author:Arthur Leo Zagat [Zagat, Arthur Leo]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-03-07T17:16:32.750000+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Later:

"Nita!"

"Ted I-"

"You did come! Here, driver, what's the fare?"

The cab circles in Fifteenth Street, vanishes eastward. Van Norden takes the woman's arm.

"Have any trouble getting away?"

"No." She is quivering. "Hurry, darling. Let's get on board before anyone sees us."

"There's some trouble. Fog or something. The pier doors are closed, but the officials say they'll be open again directly. They won't sail without us."

"Look, Ted, it is a heavy fog. Why, you can't see the river from here. Even the other end of the ship is hidden. But there isn't any haze here. Queer. The ship seems to be cut in half; it's quite distinct up to a certain point, then there just isn't anything more. It's black, not gray like fog ought to be."

"Let's go in that little lunch wagon till we can get aboard. Nobody will look for us in there."

"Let's. I'm afraid, Ted. I'm terribly afraid..."

Nobody looks at the sky except General Darius Thompson, bobbing in a little launch on the Hudson. He is staring at vacancy where New York had been a quarter hour before. Up the river the cables of the great Bridge come out of nothingness, dip, and rise to the western shore. Toward the Bay there is nothing to show where the metropolis should be. No light, no color. Nothing. Sheer emptiness. He looks at the radiant figures on his watch once more.

"Wonder what's keeping the old fool," he growls. "He should have dissipated the screen five minutes ago."

The night is warm, but General Thompson shivers suddenly, an appalling speculation beats at his mind, but he will not acknowledge it. He dares not.

A hundred yards from Thompson, in another space, a device of steel and copper and brass stands quiescent over the unmoving body of the one man who knew its secret.

Into the dim recesses of the army pier a dull hum penetrates, the voice of a million people going about their nightly pursuits, unaware, as yet, of doom.

In his cubicle on the hundred and ninetieth floor of New York University's Physics Building, Howard Cranston watched the moving needle of his Merton Calculator with narrowed eyes. If the graph that was slowly tracing itself on the result-sheet took the expected form, a problem that had taxed the ingenuity of the world's scientists for sixty years would be solved at last.

The lanky young physicist could not know it, but the electrically operated "brain" was repeating in thirty minutes calculations it bad taken Henry Lanson three years to perform, two generations before. His own contribution had been only an idea, and knowledge of the proper factors to feed into the machine. A red line curved on the co-ordinate sheet, met a previously drawn blue one. A bell tinkled, and there was silence in the room.

Breath came from between Cranston's lips in a long sigh. Curiously, he felt no elation. He crossed the room slowly, and looked out through the glassite-covered aperture in the south wall. Just below, elevated highways were a tangles maze in the afternoon sun, and helicopters danced like a cloud of weaving midges.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.