The Space Warp by John Russell Fearn

Author:John Russell Fearn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sci-fi, pulp, post holocaust, disaster, global warming
ISBN: 9781434449498
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2012-02-09T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

DEVOLUTION

Whilst the peoples of the world struggled like ants to escape from a bush-fire, Evelyn Woodcroft and Janet Meigan each lay slumped in wicker chairs, legs out-thrust in a most unladylike fashion, arms dangling helplessly over the chairs’ sides.

Prayerbook Meigan sat in shirt and trousers beside the table, smoking a cigarette and scowling at the open door­way through which the appalling sunshine blazed. Rivulets of perspiration were coursing down his smooth face.

“God Almighty, I never knew a heat-wave like this!” Mike Woodcroft declared at last, tearing off his sweat-sodden shirt and flinging it to one side. “Or anyway I never knew one to come on so suddenly!”

“‘He opened His mouth, and the Earth melted’,” Prayerbook observed absently.

Mike swung on him, his eyes hard. “Don’t you start spouting Biblical stuff now, Prayerbook, or I’ll break your neck! So help me, I’m in no mood to stand for it!”

“Sooner it comes night the better I’ll like it,” Evelyn remarked lazily, picking up a newspaper and using it as a fan. “This is worse than being on the hot seat: at least you get that over quick.”

“It’s all so—so unnatural,” Janet said, sitting up. “As if everything is burning up. In fact I—”

She frowned as she gazed through the open window, then she got to her feet and went across the bungalow’s narrow main room. She withdrew her hand sharply from the sunlit door as it scorched her palm.

“Look over there!” she exclaimed, and pointed to a spot in the hazy distance. Smoke was pluming blackly into the shimmering air.

“Grass fire,” Mike growled, coming to her side, his big chest gleaming with sweat. “Can’t expect much else in this. We must be hitting the highest temperature ever. Which reminds me—”

He turned to squint at the thermometer and he too sensed the same uneasiness as Janet. The mercury had climbed to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and even as Mike watched it climbed a little more, edging upwards remorselessly.

“Better keep out of the sunshine, Jan,” Evelyn advised. “It might do things to you. We’ve enough on our hands for later on without a sunstroke case added, to it.”

With a nod Janet turned back into the room. Mike mooched after her, playing in his memory with the news­paper facts Prayerbook had read out on the journey from town. Something about a fault in space—which didn’t mean a thing to a killer with the brutish instincts of Mike Woodcroft. All he knew was that he felt as if he were being fried.

“For the love of Pete—”

Prayerbook uttered the words in a sudden yell and jumped to his feet so violently that his chair went spinning backwards. The two girls and Mike swung to question him, then they stopped in awe as they realised what had smitten him. The sunlight was commencing to shine through the roof!

It was not burning through it: it was simply that light waves normally blocked by the thinnest of solids were now going through them instead! By slow degrees, like cloud vapourising from

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