John D. MacDonald

Journey for Seven

Chapter I

The Characters

The frame of the big blue and silver bus was faintly out of line, just enough so that it seemed to sidle along with a whipped and discouraged air. The sign on the front indicated that it was on the ten-mile run from Bell City to the suburb of Stockland, a long tiring run through a jungle of stop lights, a tangle of neon, through the rich strong scent of the industries along the river.

Stan Weaver, the burly and florid driver, his hat shoved back so that a strand of blonde silky hair fell across his forehead, chomped hard on his thick cud of gum and fought the wheel. The bus had a tendency to wander. His lunch, eaten too quickly, was a knot in his stomach, and the afternoon sun made the asphalt ahead quiver in the heat waves.

Not enough sleep. Up too late last night with the little one, fretting on account of his new teeth. Always had to get up with ’em. Madge, blast her eyes, never got out of the sack. Having them was enough, she said. Overslept and got down late and they’d given him this unruly beast of a misbegotten bus, loaded with rattles. Dirty plugs too. Kept stalling at the lights.

A molar was aching steadily and there was a patch of heat rash across the small of his back from contact with the leather bucket seat. He had been snarling and growling at the passengers all day. Why not? With three Kids and a mortgage and bad teeth and a lazy wife and take-home pay of forty-nine-fifty, a guy had a right, didn’t he? Should have stayed on the bread route. But Madge, yapping about security...

The light changed suddenly and he slammed on the brakes, taking a small malicious satisfaction out of really rocking them back there. He glanced in the big vision mirror. Hardly worth the trip. Only six of them. He thought of the joker who’d taken his bus to Florida. That was the answer. Be a better idea if there was only one passenger, though — that dolly sitting there back on the left by the window.

Shirley Sanger lifted her head and saw the driver’s eyes reflected in the mirror. She saw the gleam of interest. She gave him a long cold bored look. Even if Jeremy doesn’t like it, I can still slay the bus drivers. And the delivery boys and the cop on the corner.

Full blown, that’s good old Shirley. What had Jeremy said? Oh, yes — a Reubens type. That had sounded fine until she’d seen a Reubens. Was there any law that said a gal five foot eight couldn’t carry a hundred and forty-four pounds? Besides, the waist was as slim as girls half her size. It made buying clothes a problem.

She yawned, muffling her mouth with the back of her hand, squinting blue eyes tight shut. She wore her golden hair swept high as she believed that had a slimming effect. Her dress was rumpled. Terrible time to be getting home from a date.

She almost giggled out loud, wondering what Jane must have thought when she saw Shirley’s unused bed this morning. She shared a cheap flat with Jane on a side street in Stockland. Then she thought of Jeremy and the urge to giggle died abruptly.

Mark old Shirley up as a fool. She wondered why she had expected a proposal instead of a proposition from Jeremy. The night before she had tried to talk herself into thinking half a loaf was better than none. His apartment was very masculine. It might have worked until Jeremy opened the closet and threw her a woman’s terry cloth robe and said, “This will fit, I think.”

At the door he had tried to put up more than an argument. There was one advantage in being a big girl. There had been a lot of shoulder behind the left hook she planted in his stomach. He was still gasping audibly as she walked down the hall. Myra was surprised but glad to put her up for the night. The buses had stopped running. Taxi fare was exorbitant at that hour.

She wondered if she dared smoke a cigarette. She glanced across the aisle and saw a dark young man with a lighted cigarette cupped in his hand. There was stubble on his jaw and his hand shook. Hangover, she thought, with a tinge of sympathy.

Bill Dorvan took one more drag on the cigarette, dropped it to the dirty bus floor and rubbed it out with his shoe. The bus ride had been a foul idea. He had been walking aimlessly and had paused at a corner when the bus pulled up. Maybe it was just a subconscious yen to get away from himself.

The night before was a fetid and clouded memory of bars, of jukes, of women with bad teeth, of bar flies who hung close in hopes of a round. Not knowing how he had gotten to the cheap little hotel room was bad. Blackouts were bad. There had been too many of them in the last month. About seventy bucks left in the bank. Time to plan before hitting skid row.

Yet how could a man plan when the meaning had gone out of everything? The end of the world had been a crisp note propped against the toaster on the breakfast table. Sandra had been music, fire, delight. He guessed he had been too dull for her — too staid and properly ambitious and well-scrubbed. He had been a fool to think that Sandra could be cooped in a suburban house. Only a boid in a gilded cage.

The heck with it. He would ride to the end of the line and back. By then it would be the cocktail hour. A boilermaker is a delightful cocktail. Food and drink combined. Hops are food, aren’t they?

He dug the last cigarette out of a rumpled pack. As he bent to light it a firm hand tapped his shoulder and a level voice said, “If you don’t mind, young man. There is a city ordnance about smoking on public conveyances.”

He gave the iron face of the elderly woman behind him a quick glance. It made his head ache worse to turn. He wanted to snarl at her but the words came out, “Sorry, ma’am.”

Mrs. Thompson leaned back in her seat. Quite a polite young man in spite of the shave he needed so badly and the suit that could stand pressing. She had been tensed for insolence, prepared to blast him with several dozen well-chosen words if he had had the impunity to put up an argument.

Her bundle of groceries was beside her on the seat. She took great satisfaction in them. A widow living on a meagre pension couldn’t be foolish with money. The bus fare, round-trip, came to thirty-seven cents. The supermarket in Bell City had advertised prices that enabled her to save sixty-eight cents on the week’s staples. Profit, thirty-one cents.

In ten weeks, three dollars and ten cents — enough for a bottle of that brandy, a pint bottle. In ten weeks she could sit and sip that brandy from a teacup in the kitchen and when it was all gone she would be able to cry about Harry. He had been dead for nine years, may he rest, and without the brandy it was impossible to do a good job of mourning him.

Without the brandy all she could remember was the enormous relief she had felt when the house no longer echoed with his whining complaining voice. Too bad Harry hadn’t been as well set up and dependable looking as that man two seats ahead.

The man two seats ahead was named Ad McGoran. Mr. McGoran was a very intelligent and prosperous man. Certain interests had imported him from a city twelve hundred miles away. In Stock-land was a man named Logan Breem, who had discovered too much about the operations of the horse-room split in Bell City.

Mr. Breem had a date with the Grand Jury. And Mr. McGoran, at his usual substantial fee, was going to make certain that Mr. Breem did not keep the appointment. He wore a neat dark suit, not expensive. That morning he had applied for and acquired a temporary position selling a new type of can opener from door to door. The sample case was beside him.

He would start at the head of Mr. Breem’s street. Amateurs cruised around in black sedans cradling tommy-guns. Mr. McGoran was an expert. Experts planned carefully. Experts traveled on city buses and exuded an air of stability, of propriety. He would return one night and, on the basis of the information he had gained. Mr. Breem would abruptly cease to exist.

He studied the back of the neck of the slim girl who sat ahead of him. He was glad that he was sufficiently established in his profession so that he no longer had to accept assignments involving young women. That last young woman, nearly six years ago, had made him quite ill.

The dark hair of the girl in the seat ahead of him was drawn into a tight spinster bun on the back of her neck. Walk up behind her, not so fast as to alarm her. Left hand over her mouth, quick icepick thrust just below the bun of dark hair. No fuss. No noise.

As though conscious of his gaze the girl raised a slim white hand and patted the dark hair, a gesture infinitely feminine. Jennilou Caswell was extremely bored. The Civil Service regulations were unfair. She had been more than happy to do the extra work. But-overtime had to be taken off the following week and Mr. Fincher had practically ordered her to leave the office.

Mr. Fincher acted so odd sometimes. The way he looked at her. He should know that he could never find anywhere as efficient a secretary as Jennilou Caswell. For her the words marched from the typewriter, crisp and black, with gunfire rattle. She could transcribe as fast as the man could talk.

She dressed in neat black, used the tiniest bit of makeup, kept her voice low. When she walked she set her feet down crisply and with purpose. Purpose and plan. That was what counted in life. Work to do. Work to be proud of doing well. Orderly files. Orderly checkbook. A neat little apartment, as shining as a new needle.

Jennilou Caswell slept flat on her back because she had read that it rested a person more. She scrubbed her teeth with up and down strokes, chewed each mouthful thirty times, wore plain and sensible underclothes. All men were ridiculous, except Mr. Fincher, of course. She read instructive books, went to educational films, subscribed to lofty magazines and bathed twice a day.

She felt most assured in her dark office suit with the white collar. She felt most ill at ease when, in her apartment, off guard, she noticed the somehow blatant and vulgar femininity of her body. Though she carried but a hundred and ten pounds on her five-foot-six Finch frame she wore the tightest girdles she could squeeze into.

She gave a sideways glance of annoyance at the boy who sat on the right-angle bench near the coin box and stared fixedly at her legs. Her skirt was pulled down as far as it would go. Why didn’t the dirty little creature go back and stare at that blowzy blonde? She’d probably appreciate it.

But Benny Farr had no idea of where he was staring. He was thinking of the ten-dollar bill in his watch pocket and he had a secret sense of excitement. He was fourteen. He had a thin sallow face, an adenoidal sag of lower lip and grubby hands. His grey pants were too small for him and the dark blue sweatshirt was too big.

Benjamin Farr was deeply concerned over a matter of ethics. On the previous night he and Louie Mastinson had broken into one of the big houses on the hill. The people had been away. A noise had scared them after they’d finished testing Louie’s new hunting knife on the upholstery and all they’d gotten away with was a gold watch that Benny had found in a bureau drawer.

The pawn man had given him ten bucks for it — and he was wondering if he could get away with telling Louie that he had only got five. That would mean seven fifty for him, but that brought up the problem of changing the bill. He should have changed it in Bell City or asked the pawn man to give him the money in two fives.

The bus rolled stolidly on. When Stan Weaver stopped for a light the six heads of the passengers all nodded as though they were simultaneously agreeing, without enthusiasm, to some eternal truth. McGoran’s distinguished grey head, Shirley Sanger’s blond one, the dark head of Jennilou Caswell, the aching rumpled head of Bill Dorvan, the Queen Mary hat of Mrs. Thompson, the scurfy mud-colored head of Benny Farr.

At the end of High Street the bus rolled left under the underpass, straightened out again on Lowell Boulevard. Six heads, nodding without expression. Six bodies, lax in the seats. Tangled thoughts of Jeremy, icepicks, boilermakers, dictation, brandy and a ten-dollar bill.

Off to the left, beyond the city dump, was the garbage disposal plant and beyond it the windowed roofs of Consolidated Metallurgical winked in the sun. The dark greasy river was off to the right and lining the highway were battered stucco drive-ins, waiting for night to blossom into a fantasy of neon which could not mask the smell of stale deep fat.

On the riverbank, with the beginning of the residential section of Stockland in the distance, there appeared the long white buildings of Loma Transmission Devices, a new concern. A high wire fence surrounded it. On the roof of the central building glittered vast cup-shaped objects of shining metal, looking faintly like half-finished searchlights.

Stockland Mountain was seven miles beyond Stockland. On the top of the mountain were other devices connected with Loma Transmission Devices Research Program Ten.

The cup-shaped objects on the roof of the plant were aimed at the mountain top.

Under the stimulus of a government grant the physicists of Loma had at last made a crude but practical heat engine which could draw off and utilize a shade more than forty percent of the output of the pile buried deep in the bowels of the concrete maze under the plant property. With the heat engine hooked up to the humming generators Loma had a concentrated power source that had top executives walking around on their heels, with glazed eyes and a look of poorly-concealed glee.

Program Ten was the attempt to transmit, over a short range through the air, an intense beam of electric energy without too appreciable a loss in transit.

The plant was in direct contact with the technicians on the peak of Stockland Mountain.

At the predesignated moment the full surge of power was cut over to the cup-shaped transmitter, a full thirty feet in diameter. The attendant on the roof heard the sputter of a short circuit and raced for the cutoff switch. Power was radiating from the transmitter but the short circuit super-heated one of the stanchions supporting the transmitter. It sagged with majestic slowness, turning on the weakened brace until it was aimed directly at the highway in the distance.

The attendant slapped the cutoff switch and the buzzing faded. He cursed softly and reached for the phone. He glanced toward the highway to see if the beam of force had caused damage. A few cars glittered in the distance. At the spot where the beam had pointed a blue and silver interurban bus waddled along like a tired beetle going home from a fancy-dress party.

“Yeah,” the attendant said into the phone. “I caught it in time.”

Chapter II

The Invulnerable

It was a tingle at the back of the neck, an answering tingle at the base of the spine. It was a feeling like the flutter of warm anticipation. It was a sudden heightening of all senses, an air of wellbeing, of supreme optimism. It faded but the sense of well-being seemed to cling.

Stan Weaver’s toothache faded and the meal no longer rested heavily on his stomach. The sunshine looked good. He whistled through his teeth and clutched the wheel a bit tighter. It felt surprisingly soft. He looked down and saw the plastic of the wheel oozing between his fingers. Cold sweat popped out on him.

Gingerly he edged over to the shoulder and applied the brake. He put his big foot on the brake pedal and pushed slowly down. He pushed the pedal right down through a torn hole in the metal floor and the bus jerked to a stop.

“Why are you stopping here?” the old lady demanded.

Stan Weaver was breathing hard. He made his voice casual and said, “Something wrong with the bus, folks. I’ll flag the next one along.”

It had happened to him before but before it had been trouble he could understand. He tried to smile at the bored faces of the six passengers. It wasn’t much of a smile. He grabbed the metal bar and slung the door open. The thick metal pipe bent and tore off in his hand. He stared stupidly at it and dropped it. It hit with the proper clang of metal, instead of the soft thud he had half expected.

Shirley Sanger sighed. She reached up, grasped the brim of her felt hat to pull it more firmly into place. The felt tore like wet blotting paper and she stared blankly at the two scraps of felt between her fingers. She took the ruined hat off, pulled at it curiously. It tore without her exerting any more than the smallest effort.

Jennilou Caswell was suddenly conscious of the heat now that the motion of the bus had stopped. She knew it would be forty minutes before the next bus. Might as well wait inside the bus. She was annoyed. She grasped the metal handles of the window and gave a quick upward tug. The handles bent like the softest lead, broke in her hands. She gasped.

Ad McGoran decided to wait outside on the shoulder of the road. He picked up the sample case. The leather handle felt soft and spongy in his hand. He grasped the back of the seat ahead of him to pull himself up. His hand bit a large piece out of the back of the seat. At the tearing sound Jennilou looked around, her eyes bulging.

She said, “Why did you—”

“Girlie, they aren’t making good buses any more.”

He stalked down the aisle, stepped down onto the shoulder. There was a spot on the sleeve of his dark suit. He scrubbed at it with a blunt thumbnail and scrubbed right through the sleeve, so that his white shirt showed through. He decided that the spot was some sort of acid and began to wonder when it had happened.

Mrs. Thompson shifted the bag of groceries to a new position. The paper ripped and the groceries cascaded to the floor. She sniffed with annoyance and bent over to pick them up. The first thing she grasped was a tin of string beans.

She dropped it, took her handkerchief out of her purse and began to wipe her fingers. To all and sundry she said, “You’d think they’d know better than to use defective cans for things people are going to eat. My fingers poked right through that tin and into the beans. I’m certainly going to go back and give that place a piece of my mind.” She looked down. The handkerchief, of good Irish linen, had disintegrated like so much tissue.

Bill Dorvan decided to cross the road and catch the next bus back to Bell City. As he went to go around the back end of the bus the driver said, “Hssst! Hey, you. What you make a this?”

Bill went over. The driver poked a blunt finger against the side of the bus. He pressed hard. There was a sound like a cork being pulled from a bottle and the man’s finger went through the metal.

“Crystallization?” Bill suggested weakly.

“Nuts, brother! This bus is melting. Try it yourself.”

Bill did with-the same result. He forgot the dull ache behind his eyes. “What do you know!” he breathed.

“I’m walkin’,” Benny Farr said to nobody in particular and headed up the road toward Stockland, turning to thumb the cars that whistled by.

When he got a safe distance away from the bus he pulled the folded ten out of his watch pocket, annoyed when he heard the pocket rip. He unfolded the bill and stretched it out. It was fun to pop new bills.

He popped it and stared stupidly at the half bill in each hand. His voice cracked as he used words off fences. Have to tape it together. He folded the two halves together and creased them with his finger and thumbnail. And he suddenly had four pieces instead of two. He made a sound suspiciously like a sob.

With the window catch broken Jennilou got very warm. She stood up. The men had all left the bus. Her dress was stuck to her back. She gave a little shake, grasped the lower edge of the tight girdle between thumbs and fingers and pulled it down.

In each hand appeared a little torn wad of fabric, the size of an apple, consisting of fabric from the black suit and rubberized fabric from the girdle. She sat down suddenly, her cheeks and throat hot, and put one palm flat against each thigh to cover the holes through which peeped the reluctant flesh. She could think of no possible way to get off the bus. She wished she could faint dead away.

Mrs. Thompson, busily inspecting her purchases, had found, to her intense dismay that every tin was distressingly fragile, that the bread had the same consistency as that spun sugar sold at carnivals, that it was impossible to pick up one of the eggs.

Handling the brown paper, which tore like tissue, with great care she managed, after three false attempts, to wrap a sample of each purchase and tie it with the string from the eggs. It was hard to tie a knot in string that had all the strength of wet spaghetti.

She walked firmly down the aisle, stepped down and called back to Stan Weaver, “Young man! I am returning to the city to return unsatisfactory merchandise.”

“Goodbye, lady,” Stan said wearily.

Mrs. Thompson walked around the front of the bus and directly into the path of a panel delivery truck with a drycleaner’s sign painted on the side of it. The truck tires screamed and the Queen Mary hat sailed in the air and there was a heavy, metallic sickening thud. Mrs. Thompson described an arc and landed on the shoulder a good thirty feet in front of the bus.

Dorvan gagged and the bus driver closed his eyes and leaned against the bus. Benny Farr was a tiny dot in the distance. McGoran looked on with clinical interest. Jennilou forgot to cover the holes with her palms. Shirley Sanger closed her eyes and bit her lip.

After hitting Mrs. Thompson the truck had darted crazily across the road. It rested half in the ditch on the far side. The driver, wearing a crisp white uniform, climbed slowly out.

Mrs. Thompson stood up and brushed feebly at her ragged clothes. She turned toward the truck and in a clear voice said, “Young man, you should watch where you’re going.”

“Ain’t you dead, lady?” he asked.

Other cars stopped. Water ran out of the smashed radiator of the truck. The back end protruded out onto the highway. The front bumper was a neat, deep U, the headlights staring crosseyed at each other.

Mrs. Thompson retrieved her hat and clamped it over her iron-grey hair. Mr. McGoran retrieved her purse and handed it to her.

“There is at least one gentleman here,” she said.

“You better go to a hospital and get checked over,” Stan Weaver suggested.

“Nonsense. It shook me up a little. But I’m all right now.”

“How about my truck?” the driver asked plaintively.

“And how about my groceries?” asked Mrs. Thompson, seeing an immediate opportunity for profit. She measured the distance from where the truck had hit her to where she had struck the shoulder. She placed both hands over her heart and sank gently to the ground.

“I’m dying,” she said. She closed her eyes and thought of brandy — a quart instead of a pint.

Shirley Sanger leaned against the side of the bus. She said to Bill Dorvan, “This is beginning to get me down. Have a cigarette. Handle them gently. There’s something wrong with them. They squash. Everything in the world has gone — mealy. And that old lady — foooof.”

She took her lighter out of her purse, gave an energetic twist of the wheel. Spring, wheel and lid jumped off the lighter and fell in the dust. She gave him a grey-lipped look. “See what I mean?”

Sirens sounded in the distance. A small man with a notebook came by, saying, “Are you two people witnesses to that tragic accident? Criminal carelessness on the part of the truck driver. I’m an attorney for Mrs. Thompson. Now if you’d—”

“Go away,” Bill Dorvan said distinctly. “Come on,” he said to Shirley.

As Shirley Sanger started to walk off beside Bill the attorney grabbed her arm and tried to spin her around. Shirley angrily took his wrist to pull his hand off her arm. The little man turned dead white and screamed. He slumped and she released him. He sat on the ground and stared at his wrist. His hand was swelling and darkening and his wrist had a white pinched look. The marks of her fingers were deep and an angry red.

“What did you do to him?” Bill asked. “What is it? Judo?”

She took his wrist. “Just this.”

He shrugged. “I don’t feel anything special. You are a big strong girl, though.”

“Shut up, please.”

The ambulance with Mrs. Thompson therein wailed off toward Bell City. Three tow trucks competed for the truck job. The new bus arrived. Shirley, Bill and Mr. McGoran stared frankly at the odd stance and posture of Jennilou. Jennilou’s face was flame. She scuttled up into the waiting bus. The driver came back and said, “The crate quit on you, Stan?”

“No. I just got tired of driving it.”

“Now I’ll laugh. What’s wrong?”

“It’s melting. Look.” Stan did the finger trick.

The other driver licked his lips and tried. He pushed and pushed. Nothing happened except that his knuckle cracked.

“Do that again.”

Stan shrugged and did it again. Once again the other driver tried. Bill, watching them, began to have an impossible and incredible hunch. He found a fifty cent piece in his pocket. He pressed his thumb firmly into the middle of it and turned it into a soup bowl for a set of toy silver dishes. He shuddered and put it back in his pocket. He caught Shirley just as she was about to board the bus.

“Get off,” he said firmly.

“Look, are you...”

“Please, whatever your name is. It’s important.”

She got off. “The name is Shirley Sanger.”

“Bill Dorvan. Look. Can you bend this back?” He handed her the coin. She bent it back.

He took it over to the new driver. “Bud, can you bend this coin?”

“I got no time for jokes, Mister.”

Stan Weaver took the coin, held it on edge between thumb and finger and bent it double. He gave Bill Dorvan an odd look. He handed it to the new driver. The man couldn’t pry it apart.

Dorvan turned quickly to Shirley and said, “Come on. We walk for awhile.” She fell in stride beside him without protest.

Chapter III

Eating Cobwebs

The interne looked at Mrs. Thompson with a skeptic’s eye. Her wrist was amazingly hard for the wrist of an old woman. The pulse felt strong and normal.

“Shock, maybe,” he said. “Plasma, just in case.”

The bottle was rigged. He bared the old arm, took the needle and slid it expertly against the blue vein in the bend of the elbow. The needle slipped off. He grunted and tried again. Once again it slipped. He examined the point. It looked all right. He tried to get it in at right angles.

He pressed down. He could see a tiny indentation in the skin. No more. The needle suddenly bent back on itself. The skin blunted the edge of the scalpel he tried next. He began to perspire. He tried the other arm. Only then did he call the resident.

In half an hour both men were perspiring freely. They went over to the far corner of the emergency ward.

The resident said, “Entirely new to me. Obscure disease of some sort. I can’t even scratch her!”

Mrs. Thompson sat up. “Stop mumbling.”

The two men gave her nervous smiles. “Everything is fine, Mrs. Thomas.”

“Thompson.”

The interne whispered, “Let’s put her under and get a diamond drill.”

The resident flinched, thought it over, said, “Get hold of the anaesthetist and have her wheeled upstairs.”

Benny Farr didn’t see the cop until he got up on his front porch. By then it was too late to make a run for it.

“You Benjamin Farr?”

Inside the house he could hear the sound of his mother weeping. Always looking for an excuse to turn on the flood. “What if I am?”

“We got a friend of yours down at the station. He’s been giving us quite a story.”

“Louie!” Benny gasped.

“Right, lad. Now come along quiet.”

He grabbed Benny’s wrist. Benny twisted away and released himself with surprising ease. “Getcha hands offa me!”

The cop lunged and grabbed him by the shoulders. Benny caught a thick wrist in his two skinny hands and twisted it. The cop yelled and fell heavily. He came up fast, his arm hanging oddly twisted. Benny turned and ran.

He heard his mother scream and there was a terrific blow between his shoulder blades. Synchronous with the blow was the sound of a shot. He fell, rolled, got to his feet and continued running. Another shot and a whirr by his ear. Benny kept running, rounding the corner, cutting over behind the Reilly house and across the new lots.

McGoran sold three can openers on the street before he arrived at the Breem house. His suave tone masked a dozen petty annoyances. The handle had come off the sample case and the latch had somehow become badly bent. He had broken two doorbells without meaning to. He had to hold the case under his arm.

Halfway up the sidewalk of the Breem house he heard the scream of tires. He whirled, slapping at his armpit.

“Don’t touch it, McGoran,” a cold voice said. “We’ve been expecting you any day.”

“My name isn’t McGoran.”

“Fingerprints will prove that. Walk slowly toward the car. Lock your fingers at the nape of your neck. That’s right.”

There were three men in dark suits in the car. They watched him approach with heavy amusement.

There were two in the front seat, one in the back. The one in the back opened the car door. McGoran grabbed the man’s wrist and pulled him out of the car, dodging around behind it and pulling his own gun. It was an automatic and to make certain there was a shell in the chamber he yanked hard on the slide. The slide pulled off in his hand.

He turned to run, knowing he was too late. The burst of shots, striking his back, staggered him. He turned to lift his hands, forgetting that he still held the broken automatic in his hands. The man fifteen feet away pumped four slow shots into McGoran’s cheat. He stood, waiting for the black mist of death, waiting for the ground to come up and hit him.

As he moved a slug shifted down, rolled down inside his pant leg and across the pavement. The three men stared at him. McGoran turned and ran again. Two sharp blows against the back of his head half dazed him but he kept running.

Jennilou Caswell collapsed onto her bed. It was so wonderful to be alone in the apartment at last. Later she would get the superintendent to replace the key which had twisted off in the lock as she had opened the door.

She ruefully examined the ruined dress. It tore as she lifted it over her head. The girdle ripped as she peeled it off. She frowned. Probably, without knowing it, she had walked through an acid mist of some sort. She remembered reading about some city where chemical dust in the air had ruined nylons.

She took a shower, tore one of her favorite towels afterward. Slowly she was learning to handle things more delicately. But no matter how hard she tried she could not get back into another girdle. She weighed herself, found that her weight was exactly the same as before.

When she tried to comb her hair the teeth shredded out of the comb. She gave up, tried to file her nails. Her nails wore the burr off the file. She tried nail scissors and the blades bent like wax.

Close to hysteria she opened her own typewriter. Typing exercises always soothed her. Feeling better, she rattled off the first line. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy red dog.” Machine-gun speed. At the end of the line her hand flicked up and slammed the carriage return back for the next line. The carriage slammed completely out of the end of the typewriter carrying the paper with it, and crashed on the floor beside her desk.

Jennilou Caswell buried her face in her hands and began to weep as though her heart was broken.

“Are you convinced?” Bill Dorvan asked the tall blond girl.

She had gnawed her lipstick off her lower lip. Her eyes had a glazed look. “Little man, I am more than convinced.”

“Something happened in that bus. I had a tingling feeling. Did you?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“We don’t feel any different. It’s like you said — as though everything had become mealy. But it hasn’t. We’re different, you and I — and of course the others on that bus. I’ll never forget your face after you took a poke at that telephone pole.”

“You told me to, smartie.”

“Just like somebody had hit it with the blunt end of a steel baseball bat. You punched a hole six inches deep.”

She shuddered. “Don’t talk about it.”

“It isn’t what you’d call a feminine characteristic, babe. You could take on Ray Robinson and Gorgeous George at the same time.”

“You cease to amuse.”

“I made up my mind not to talk to any more women.”

“How lucky for them!”

“But we’ve got something in common and somehow I don’t want to be alone with this nasty little knack we’ve developed. Do you?”

“I... I guess not.”

“Let’s go back to town. I’ll buy you a meal near a place where I can get a shave. Then I’ll look a little more respectable.”

She gave him a sudden grin which wrinkled her nose. “Okay, iron man.”

An hour later the barber lathered Bill Dorvan’s face, took a glance at the clock. Five minutes to go.

He stropped the razor, made a long stroke from temple to chin. The razor rasped across the beard with none of the usual sleek sound. It lifted the lather off and left the beard. The barber grunted and got another razor. Same thing. He examined the edges of the blades. The notches were visible to the naked eye.

With a wet towel he mopped off the lather. He tilted the chair back to normal position. He said, “Mister, you take that beard to somebody else. Already two razors ruined. Please go away. No charge.”

Bill stood up. Before the barber could protest, he picked up a pair of shears. Looking in a mirror he grasped a thick-lock of hair, tried to cut it with the shears. It bent the center rivet and sprung the blades. He threw the shears aside and stalked out of the shop, wondering how he’d look in a full beard.

McGoran hid until night, then made his way into the city. He could not tear his mind from what he had seen when he had pulled his shirt open to examine his wounds. There were four round bruises on his chest, the skin faintly broken over two of them. Other things had begun to add up. In the patch of woods where he hid he had found a rusty horseshoe. It had been simple to twist it until the metal snapped.

His clothes were a giveaway. In the city he found a man his size. He followed him. On a dark street he caught up with him. He had meant to take the man very gently by the throat. But the throat pulped under his fingers and the man was dead before McGoran dragged him away. It was difficult to undress the body but he managed it. He left the man naked in the small court behind the dark office building, stuffed his own clothes into a wastepaper bin three blocks away.

He then walked boldly into a good restaurant and ordered dinner. It wasn’t until he took his first bite of steak that some of the more horrid aspects of this odd change became more evident. The steak dissolved like gelatin. The flavor was right but he could part it with his lips. The texture was sickeningly bland. He could barely detect the substance of the bread. It was akin to eating cobwebs.

Chapter IV

Hell to Pay

Tom Bellbight was a physically lazy man, lank, languid. A pipe smoker, a congenital bachelor, a hanger of legs over chair arms, a fight fan, a doctor of physics, research chief of Program Ten for Loma.

He came shuffling into Dickinson’s office with a sheaf of newspapers in his hand. Dickinson looked up impatiently. “Well?”

Tom Bellbight knocked the ashes out of his pipe and shoved it into his pocket. He collapsed into a chair like a scarecrow blown over by the wind. “Now beat on your chest like a partridge, Dick. You can spare a couple of minutes.”

Dickinson sighed. “Okay. What goes?”

“Accident yesterday. Old lady hit by a truck.”

“That’s hardly earthshaking, Tom.”

“This old lady walked out in front of a bus. Truck hit her. Did two hundred and eighty-six dollars damage to the front end of the truck. Knocked the old lady thirty feet. Didn’t even bruise her.”

“She sounds like my mother-in-law.”

“The bus was stopped because the driver pushed the brake pedal down through the floor. I stopped down and looked at the bus. Take about eleven hundred pounds to push that pedal down that way.”

“Are you trying to confuse me?”

“After he did that the bus driver pushed his finger through the side of the bus. About a dozen times.”

“Probably the old lady’s son — the old lady you were talking about.”

“Oh, I checked on her in the hospital. They had to use a diamond drill to open a vein in her arm.”

“This isn’t April first, Tom.”

“Just keep listening, Dick. Yesterday afternoon a cop shot a kid in the back. The kid kept running. The kid, about fourteen, had broken the cop’s arm. Cop weighed two ten. That happened at about the same time plainclothes cops tried to pick up one Addison McGoran. They shot him three times in the back, four times in the chest, twice in the back of the head.”

“Thorough job.”

“He ran away.”

Dickinson flushed. “Listen, Dr. Bellbight, if you think that I’m going to stop what I’m doing and—”

“Keep your balance sheet buttoned, Dick. Man found in Bell City last night. Throat so crushed the coroner was ready to swear he’d been strangled by an ape. Lawyer out at the accident got his wrist broken by a blond gal who just grabbed him. She didn’t twist. She grabbed him.”

“What are you—”

“A scientist is supposed to correlate interesting little facts. Today the police in Stockland found a lot of busted pay phone and pinball machines. In each case the metal on the coin box looked as though it had been tinfoil grabbed by a small hand, a kid’s hand. His fingers punched through the metal and the coins were gone.

“A babe, at midnight last night, Civil Service steno, tried to commit suicide. Jumped out of her apartment window. Eighth story. Half dressed. She hit on the asphalt, got up and went back to her room. I went out this afternoon and took a look at the spot. You can see a clear imprint of the side of her face in the asphalt.”

“I am beginning to suspect that this isn’t some idiotic joke. But I can’t guess what your object is.”

“Coming to it. Yesterday evening a guy went into a barbershop just before closing time. Barber tried two razors — couldn’t cut a hair. Then the guy took scissors and tried to cut a lock of his own hair. Here’s the scissors. I got ’em from the cops. The barber reported him. The bus driver went home last night and gave his wife a light love tap. Broke her jaw and knocked two teeth out and gave her a concussion. Swears that he only tapped her with his fingertips.”

“This seems to be an amazing account of durability.”

“Seven people on that bus. The old lady, the driver, the babe who tried to kill herself, the blondie who broke the guy’s wrist, the fellow with a beard too tough to cut, the kid who was shot in the back and the guy who stopped nine slugs.”

“All on the same bus?”

“As near as I can check.”

“For heaven’s sake, Tom. So what?”

Tom smiled mildly. “So that bus went by here at exactly two-eighteen yesterday afternoon.”

Dickinson’s face slowly changed.

He said softly, “Two-eighteen.” He got up from behind the desk and stood by the window. “But that doesn’t—”

“Johnny Hubbard was on the roof. He says that the transmitter sagged and pointed at the highway. The only thing in the line of fire was a blue-and-silver bus.”

“But what we’re trying to do doesn’t mean that—”

“We know very little about what we’re trying to do, Dick. I’ve got my own hunches about it.”

“What do you think?”

“In strictly non-technical language, Dick, I think the beam gave those people a sea-change. Take soft wood — pine. Type of molecular activity and surface density not too hard to disturb. Dent it with your thumbnail. Make a change in molecular activity — say freeze it to absolute zero. Have a hard time denting it with a cold chisel and a sledge.

“Or the reverse. Suppose you speed up the electron activity. Each electron a tiny electrical charge zooming around at a great rate. Forty thousand miles a second roughly. Suppose you push that up to a hundred thousand miles a second. My guess is that the pine would react the same as though it had been frozen to absolute zero.

“I have a hunch that the beam had no effect on inanimate substances but that through some freak of luck, or bad luck, it speeded the whirl of electrons in all animate substances within range. So it’s not too hard to figure the effects. It would affect function and muscle tone. Enormously powerful people with a structure like the finest tool steel. Teeth like diamonds.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

Bellbight smiled. “Then Dick, old man, you think up an answer for indestructible old ladies, men who can shove a finger through sheet steel and a man you can shoot in the back of the head without stopping him.”

Dickinson turned from the window, his face worried. “I’ll have to contact the lawyers. There’ll be damage suits from this. There’ll be hell to pay — if you’re right. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go see the little girl who jumped out the window. And then I’m going down to the jail in Bell City and see the bus driver. When his wife came out of the fog she signed a complaint.”

The third time he knocked on the door, more impatiently than before he heard her say, “Go away!” There was a tiny metallic quality to her voice, the half-echo of the sound a musical saw might make.

He called to her. “I’m not a reporter, Miss Caswell.”

Her voice was closer to the other side of the door. “Who are you?”

“You need me, Miss Caswell.”

Her laugh was metal hysteria. “Oh, a psychiatrist.”

“No, a physicist.”

After a long silence the door opened abruptly. The hair was no longer in a neat dark bun. It flowed in wild disorder, giving her a fey look. She wore blue jeans and a heavy flannel shirt.

“I can wear these clothes,” she said, “if I’m very careful.”

He walked across the room and sat down, stared curiously at a fireplace poker that had been tied neatly into a lover’s knot.

In a flat unemotional clinical tone he told her in layman’s language what he thought was wrong with her. He didn’t tell her how or why it had happened.

She sat opposite him.

“Why did you try to kill yourself, Miss Caswell?” he asked gently.

She ran a shaking hand through her hair. “Everything was — orderly. I wanted a normal life more than anything. I had everything planned. And then this. I can’t go to work. Everything I touch—”

“That’s because all of this is new to you. Suppose you took a child and put him to work juggling glassware. Impossible at first, yes. But slowly he would learn the requisite manual dexterity. He would form a sensory, nervous and muscular adjustment to the task.”

“But I can’t even comb my hair. Food has no substance to it.”

“We can have a comb made of tool steel. The problem is akin to combing hard wire. It is possible to buy tough cuts of meat and overbroil them. I think I can understand how you feel. You touch your own arm. It feels the way it always did. It seems to you as though everything in the world has turned fragile. There is no solid substance to anything. Right?”

She nodded. He was pleased to see that his calm tone had quieted her.

“What do you want of me?”

“I want to help you. In return, I want something on which to make laboratory tests. Bite off a fragment of fingernail and pull a few hairs from your head. Also I want to see how your skin feels to the touch.”

The hairs were like steel wire. The halfmoon of fingernail felt like a chip from the cutting edge of a machine tool.

Quite suddenly she began to weep. He put his hands on her shoulders. Gently at first, then exerting all his strength, he tried to dig his fingers into her. Her head was bent. She lifted her face and looked at him from streaming eyes. He saw the tiny scratches at the base of her throat.

“How did that happen?”

“I tried — a knife. It bent.”

On impulse he kissed her lightly. Her lips were warm and tasted of salt but they were formed of a strange marble.

“Everything will be fine,” he said.

Chapter V

Folk of Iron

Stan Weaver sat on the cell bunk and said, “I always wondered how it would feel to go nuts.”

“Suppose you’re not crazy,” Bellbight said.

Weaver stood up. “Of course I’m crazy! Look here.” He went over to the cell door, grasped the bars, spread them wide and easily bent them back. He said. “I’ve read enough magazine articles and seen enough movies about people with broken wagons, bud. I just thought I bent those bars.”

“Look, Weaver. Something happened to you. You’re not crazy. At this moment you’re probably the strongest man in the world. Bullets would bounce off you. This is so strange to you that you’ve jumped on what you think is a reasonable explanation. I’ve interviewed your wife in the hospital. I assure you that you didn’t imagine what happened to her when you gave her that love tap.”

Stan Weaver sat down heavily. He said, “I hated driving those crates full of sourpuss people. Now I wish I was on the route again and I wish I couldn’t even remember what happened. I wish Madge was okay.”

He looked up and gave Tom Bellbight a weak smile. “This time I just tapped her, real light like, across the cheek. If I’d hit where I usually do I’d have busted her back.”

“I’ve been talking to your wife as I said. I explained a few things. She’s withdrawing the complaint. You can walk out of here with me.”

“Maybe it isn’t safe for me to be around. Maybe I’m better off here.”

“Now you’re beginning to think straight, Mr. Weaver. I’ve got a car outside. The sergeant has the stuff on his desk that he took out of your pockets. Come on along and just remember every minute that you can smash anything you touch too quickly, up to and including the human species.”

“Where do we go? I don’t want to go home. Madge’s sister is looking after the kids. She’s got a tongue like a rusty razor.”

“No. We’ll go to my lab. It’s at the Loma plant.”

“I know the place. Go by there six times a day.”

After using up the whole box of blades, McGoran gave up trying to shave. He was almost devoid of imagination. There was a logical explanation for everything. If a fact could not be explained it could be utilized. There was no capacity for awe in him. In the hotel room he carefully tested his new characteristics, cannily avoiding any destruction that would be overly noticeable.

As the full import struck him he began to make plans that were more inclusive than any he had ever considered before. If it was possible to roll a dime between his fingers into a pellet, then it followed that no barrier of metal would stop him. Thus jails were no longer traps. If bullets had little effect the police were no longer to be feared. Of course an artillery piece would probably do the trick.

Definitely they would be hunting him. The biggest question mark was how much longer this new invulnerability would last. Thus, if the duration were suspect, it would be wise to utilize the benefits of it before it wore off.

He had always possessed a considerable scorn for fellow humans. Now this scorn was intensified. At last his inner suspicion of superiority had been definitely proved. And he realized that he had always suspected that one day it would be proved.

The urge to put it to the test was too strong to withstand. He tiptoed down the corridor of the hotel until he heard voices behind one of the doors. It was eleven in the morning.

He tried the knob and it twisted off in his hand. He rammed his finger into the keyhole, the metal spread to admit it. He crooked the finger, turning it, feeling the rasp of broken metal inside. The door swung open as he pushed.

The man stood in his underwear by the window. A doughy young girl sat on the edge of the bed pulling on her nylons. The man whirled and said, “Wrong room, brother.”

“Right room. Let’s see your money.”

The man was young and huge. He tensed and said, “A gag?”

“No gag.”

With no warning the man rushed him. McGoran tried to dodge the blow but it landed squarely on the blunt point of his chin. There was the tiny crunch of broken bones. The huge young man screamed thinly, bending x> hug his broken hand to his belly.

To McGoran the blow felt as though somebody had flicked him with a towel. He chopped down at the young man’s head with his clenched fist. The blow-drove the young man face down onto the floor, blood welling slowly into the ugly concave fracture of the skull.

McGoran sucked his lip. He hadn’t planned on murder. The girl, without a sound, darted for the door. He snatched her wrist as she went by him. He swung her around, feeling the bone give. There was a pressure point at the base of the skull... She dropped across the body of the young man with the limp impact of death.

McGoran pocketed the sixteen dollars he found in the man’s billfold, plus the seven dollars from the girl’s purse. This had not gone properly but there was time to rectify it. He slid the window open, picked them up as though they were rag dolls and slung them through the opening, the girl first.

The excitement gave him the mask of obscurity as he went through the lobby out onto the street and turned away from the crowd that already was blocking traffic.

McGoran walked down the street, feeling larger than life, stronger than a god, invincible and untouchable. He walked with a wide grin on his face, breathing deeply.

There were two tin cups and they drank from them. The cups had to be handled as carefully as though they were made of wet paper.

Bill Dorvan said solemnly, “Announcement to make. Man of iron announces liquor still works. Fact of scientific interest, no doubt.”

Shirley Sanger peered at him. “You’re a mess, bub. Indians used to pull their beards out. Read it in a book. Can’t you do that?”

He grasped one hair by the corner of his mouth and tugged. It came out. “Hurts too much. Always wanted a beard. Now gotta have one.”

She looked around. “Nice apartment here. But dirty. Needs a good cleaning.”

“Sandra used to keep it clean. That’s the toaster right there. Toaster the note leaned on. Famous toaster. Hate it.”

“You just feel sorry for yourself. Poor abused male.”

“All women no good. Accepted fact.”

“You say.”

“I say. Know from experience.” He frowned at her. “I know you’re no good too but I like you. And we got a lot in common.” He reached over and patted her shoulder.

“Hands off, iron man. I told you before and I tell you again that whatever it is that has happened to us doesn’t give you any invitation to play house. I came back here this morning because I scared the whey out of Jane, my roommate. I had her try to comb my hair.”

He said, “Carnival act.”

“What?”

“Manifest destiny. You and me. Go do tricks for the people. Bend iron bars. Lots of dough in it.”

“I wouldn’t team up with a drunk.”

“Who’s a drunk?”

“You are, William Dorvan. A sloppy self-pitying no-good escapist drunk.”

“Then why hang around?”

“I won’t.” She got up and picked up her purse and headed for the kitchen.

He scrambled after her, breaking the chair in the process. He caught her at the door. He shook his head. “Wait a second while I talk sense. Right now I’m beginning to feel sober. You scared me. Shirley, I was drinking to try to get this thing that’s happened to us into better perspective. I wasn’t drinking on account of Sandra. All that doesn’t seem so important any more.

“Shirley, I like you. I want you around. Suppose that this iron business never wears off. You could never kiss a man without being afraid of crushing his ribs and snapping off his teeth. No man but me. In a world that’s suddenly turned crazy we’re going to be outcasts. But this is what is important — even without the craziness I’d still want you around.”

She gave him a long level look. She sighed. “If I’m careful enough maybe I can whip up some coffee, Dorvan.”

Benny Farr lay in the brush, for once unashamed of tears.

He knew that he could not go home. Home had suddenly become an enormously desirable place. He had the idea that if he slept in his own bed he would wake up to find that this new enormous and terrifying strength bad gone from him as inexplicably as it had arrived.

His torn pockets jangled with the nickels he had taken from phone booths and pinball machines. But the money wasn’t any good. Not with someone watching his house so that he couldn’t go back. He knew that he had broken the cop’s arm. That would mean reform school if not something worse.

When the tears finally faded away he rolled to where he could sit with his back against the bole of a tree. He picked up a stone and slowly powdered it between his fingers. It gave him a sense of power to be able to do that.

There was a lump in his throat. He couldn’t go home. If he stayed close to Stockland they’d get him sooner or later.

A freight train chuffed along in the distance. That had to be the answer. He walked at first, then ran. A new city, empty houses to break into. He knew he could kill a normal man with his bare hands. Let a brakeman try to throw him off the train. He’d throw the brake-man off piece by piece.

He ran along beside the box car. The freight was moving. He could not run as fast as it was going. He snatched the hand rail. His body slammed against the side of the box car as the hand rail snapped in his fingers. He fell to the roadbed, bounded under the wheels.

There was a tenth of a second of shrill fear, an enormous blow, then a melting velvet darkness.

Chapter VI

Angry Voices

Husky voices in the summer evening. “Reee all about ut! Iron men. Can’t kill ’em! Reeee all about ut!”

Saccharine voice of the commentator. “Despite the attempts of the Loma plant executives to hush it up, police have discovered that a defective electric ray of some sort was unleashed by accident on the public five days ago shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon.

“This ray had the effect of giving the six passengers and the bus driver in the vehicle it touched enormous strength and virtual indestructibility. This became evident when, late yesterday afternoon, Benjamin Farr, one of the passengers on the bus, attempted to board a fast freight three miles outside of Stockton.

“He fell under the wheels. The Medical Examiner has stated that at least five sets of wheels passed over the boy. He died of a crushed throat. Though his body, except for the throat, was virtually unmarked, the wreck of the freight train tied up east-west traffic on four sets of tracks for nearly five hours.

“Of the six passengers and the bus driver, the following are now in custody — Stanley H. Weaver, the bus driver. He is being held at Loma for experimental work with the permission of the authorities. Miss Jennilou Caswell, Civil Service stenographer, under guard at her apartment. Mrs. Harry Thompson, widow, now at the General Hospital.

“Still at large are Addison McGoran, hired killer, and a young man and young woman whose names, up to the moment of this broadcast, are not yet known. Following are the descriptions of McGoran and the other two. If you should see anyone meeting this description, please phone the police immediately. Warning. These three people may be dangerous. McGoran certainly is.”

Bill Dorvan gingerly turned the dial, shutting off the radio. He gave Shirley a weak smile. “Now we’re news, baby.”

“What will we do, Bill?”

“I say, let’s go to Loma. Maybe they know what they’re doing. I’m sure the cops won’t.”

Tom Bellbight slouched into Dickinson’s office. This time he got immediate attention. “Well?” said Dickinson.

“Hardness tests show no fluctuation. He can stand heat that would blister you or me. Much less susceptible to fatigue. I’ve rigged up a few special tests. Whatever it is, it isn’t fading a bit. We checked the samples and my guess is right. Acceleration of electron orbits. I don’t know what to do next.”

“If they can only round up those three, the heat will be off us, Tom. The old lady is suing. So’s the bus company. That’s the only two so far.”

The communication box buzzed. Dickinson pushed the switch down, said, “I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed. What! Send them right in.”

He grinned at Bellbight. “Two of the missing three. A Mr. Dorvan and a Miss Sanger.”

“We’ll clamp onto them,” Bellbight said, “and run them through the same tests I’ve been giving Weaver.”

“Shall we tell the police?”

“I think so. They won’t want them. They don’t want people who can walk out of their cells like tanks going through a barracks.”

“Why haven’t you been running the tests on the Caswell girl?”

Tom Bellbight, surprisingly, flushed. “She’s a little unraveled at the edges. Tough on her, you know.”

“Don’t tell me that such a confirmed misogynist—”

“Just call me an amateur psychiatrist, Dick. Jennilou was in one of those graves open at both ends, commonly called a rut. The walking dead. This is shocking her out of it. She might turn out to be a person.”

Dickinson assumed an official glare. “Which is more important, Tom? Getting Loma into the clear on this thing or your personal social experiment.”

Bellbight yawned. “A long time ago, Dick, I decided that I was a rebel. The only way I could acquire immunity from people who like to give orders was to acquire specialized knowledge. Ever since then I’ve done exactly as I please. Take it or leave it. Is that too blunt?”

The girl opened the door and Shirley Sanger and Bill Dorvan came into the office. They walked with care. Dorvan rubbed his stubbed chin apologetically. “Need anything lifted or bent?”

“We can’t tell you how much we appreciate your coming here like this and we can’t tell you how sorry we are that this happened,” Dickinson said.

“In some funny way, maybe it’s a good thing,” Shirley said, glancing at Bill Dorvan.

“At least,” said Bellbight, “life hasn’t been dull for you. My name is Bellbight. You two deserve facts. As of the moment, after working with the driver, Mr. Weaver, I can say that there is no diminution of this new aspect. I am at a loss as to what can be done through laboratory means to alter it.”

Dorvan swallowed hard. “That seems straight enough. It gives a guy a pretty — lonesome feeling.”

“Like we were from Mars or something,” Shirley said.

“You are willing to cooperate?” asked Dickinson.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Shirley said sharply.

“Fine. You’ll report to Tom Bellbight here. You’ll be given rooms in the lab workers’ annex.”

“How about this McGoran guy?” Bill asked.

“No clue as to where he might be so far. But he’ll give himself away. You can be sure of that,” Dickinson answered.

“Do you remember the dark girl on the bus?” Bellbight asked.

Shirley nodded. “Shy kid. Pretty prim. Scared. Say this must be pretty rugged for her.”

“It is. I’d like to have you sort of become a mother hen. She’ll be better off around another woman similarly affected. I’ll talk her into coming over here.”

Ad McGoran sat in the room he had rented in Bell City and grinned as he read the newspapers, heard the speculation over the radio. They were stupid, all of them. That talk about the beard being a giveaway. He stroked his smooth chin. His face was pink and slightly sore. It had meant three hours of work with a hand mirror but he had plucked out every last hair.

And all that stuff about giving himself away. Nonsense! All he had to do was keep his head. No sudden movements. Touch everything gently. Don’t let anyone brush against his rock-hard body in a crowd.

He left the room to eat and buy newspapers. And his mind was busy. There were so many possibilities. Single-handed he could take over an armored bank car or break through the wall of any building. But that made money too easy. There should be something bigger and better.

Power was the answer. There was a purpose behind all this. If he went after the dough they’d get to work on him. Big guns and gas and possibly electric shock. No, the thing was evident. Take over from the inside. Fix it so that his superiority would be recognized.

But that couldn’t be done alone. He thought back over the people in the bus. The driver was good material. And that guy with the hangover. He looked sore at the world. The big blonde would join him too. Not the timid little black-haired one who had sat in front of him. Four of them could do it. Take over — declare that a new type of human was going to be boss from now on — threaten political assassinations — carry out a few to put the fear of God in the others.

The kid was dead and the old lady was too bossy. It had to be the driver and the one with the hangover and the blonde. The paper said that all three were at Loma. And so the idea was to get to them during the night. A little conference — it wouldn’t take long to make them understand.

The four of them — that was the picture. Ad McGoran would be the boss — the big boss. And the blonde was nice. Sanger — that was her name. He could take over and the other two would follow orders and the blonde would be beside him. No petty thefts. No bank jobs. Start right at the top.

Mrs. Thompson caught the lip of the beer can between the fingernails of her thumb and first finger and stripped it off delicately. She drained the can and frowned. Didn’t seem to be any body to the beer any more. More like a gas than a liquid. Hardly able to feel it on her tongue.

When the beer was finished she crumpled the can like a paper cup and threw it in the general direction of the white enamel wastebasket in her hospital room.

The nurse came in, only half able to conceal her distaste. She said distantly, “You have visitors, Mrs. Thompson.”

“Young woman,” Mrs. Thompson said with metallic distinctness, “You have been told that I have no interest in answering the questions of rattle-headed newspaper people and that I have no time for cranks who—”

“These men have police permission, Mrs. Thompson. I think you should see them.”

Mrs. Thompson sighed. “Don’t let ’em stay long, honey.”

Three men filed in. They were prosperous looking, a bit flashily dressed. They wore confident smiles.

The tallest one bowed. “Mrs. Thompson? I am Arthur Ledbetter. This is my partner, John Hungerford. Ledbetter and Hungerford, theatrical agents. And this other gentleman is Wilton Hisk, our attorney.”

“Pleased, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Thompson, visibly impressed.

Mr. Hisk wore glasses. He cleared his throat in passable imitation of a toy trumpet. “Mrs. Thompson, many, many obstacles were strewn in our path by those who would seek to isolate you from the world, calling your condition unfortunate.

“However, on your behalf I have forced the authorities to admit that there are no charges against you, that you are a free agent and that your liberty would not constitute a menace to this or any other community.”

“I’m sprung?” asked Mrs. Thompson.

“Ah — precisely. You may leave at any time.”

“But I’m a sick woman. Horrible accident. Damages, you know.”

“And how much do you expect to get?” Mr. Hisk asked softly.

Mrs. Thompson bit her lip. “Maybe as much as five thousand.”

Mr. Hisk bowed low to Mr. Ledbetter and said, “I think you should tell her.”

Mr. Ledbetter unstrapped his briefcase with the air of the court jeweler bringing emeralds to the queen. He took out stiff and official-looking contracts and laid them reverently by Mrs. Thompson’s elbow.

“What are these?”

“This top one is a contract with the Hawley Chain of Theaters. All you have to perform are a few small feats of strength. Sixteen weeks. When the curtain goes up you are sitting in a rocking chair. Same pose as Whistler’s Mother. You smile at the audience, pick up a horseshoe—”

“How much?”

“Ah — two thousand a week for sixteen weeks.”

Mrs. Thompson swallowed hard. “I... I...”

“And this contract is with Trans-East Video. Six months. One halfhour show a week. Total value of this one is twenty-six thousand, less of course our usual fifteen percent. This contract is for two weeks in the Garden with the Lombard Kirby International Circus. Five thousand a week.”

Mrs. Thompson said weakly, “A woman of my position and standing in the community. It isn’t dignified. I...” Her voice faltered and she licked her lips.

Mr. Hungerford spoke for the first time. “I assure you that each act will be staged with enormous dignity, Mrs. Thompson. And, as a small advance in consideration of your signature...” He took out a fat wallet, counted out four crisp five hundred dollar bills. He bowed as he handed her the pen.

Mrs. Thompson put her tongue in the corner of her mouth and signed. She giggled nervously. She looked at the pen and said, “This is one of those pens that writes under brandy, isn’t it? How absurd of me! I meant to say under water.”

The three dignified gentlemen joined in her nervous laughter.

The fenced enclosure of the Loma plant was lit by floodlights. But one corner was darker than the others. McGoran, crouching low, ran from one clump of shadow to the next. He paused and watched the fence, the area beyond.

At last he reached the fence itself. He thrust a hooked finger through the wire, ripped down. The thin steel parted with a faint singing sound.

In seconds he was across the open space and crouched at the base of the wall of the laboratory wing, his breathing unlabored, his face calm and confident.

The footsteps of the guard came close. As the guard rounded the corner McGoran jumped, bearing him to the ground. A steel-hard hand clamped across the man’s mouth before he could cry out.

McGoran leaned close, his lips almost touching the man’s ear, “I’m McGoran. Don’t struggle. Where are the others? The ones like me. The bus driver and Dorvan and the blonde.”

He cautiously released the pressure. “Go to—!” the guard grunted.

McGoran smiled without mirth and found the man’s hand. He slowly clamped down on it, stifling the scream of pain, feeling the bones give with the faint sound of a wooden matchbox slowly crumpled.

“Do you tell me or do I fix the other hand?”

“Next — building to the — left. Far end of it. Second floor.”

McGoran almost tenderly shifted the heel of his hand until it was under the guard’s chin. He pushed up. The guard lay with his dead eyes open, staring at the slow shift of the countless stars, the night breeze brushing his distorted face. McGoran took the man’s flashlight and hat.

Ten minutes later he crouched by Dorvan’s bed and shook Dorvan awake. Bill sat up, saying, “What goes on?”

“Shut up and listen.”

“Who’re you?”

“McGoran. You make a sound before I finish and I’ll kill you. Don’t think I can’t. I’ve got a proposition for you, Dorvan.”

“You’re crazy to come here, McGoran.”

“I can use you, Dorvan, and you can use me.”

Two hundred yards away Tom Bell-bight stood on the flat roof of the central transmission station. He leaned against the guard mesh of one of the huge cup-shaped transmitters. The starlight was bright, only slightly dimmed by the floodlights four stories below.

He tamped the tobacco down into his pipe with his thumb as he glanced at Jennilou Caswell who sat on the low concrete wall that bordered the roof. As he lit the pipe the puffing flames gleaming on the flat planes of his face, he kept watching her. The silhouette of brow and nose against the far panel of stars was very lovely indeed.

She said, “I forgot to thank you for the comb.”

“Friend of mine in a machine shop. Made it out of moly steel. Works, eh?”

She turned toward him and smiled. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

“Thought you were looking kempt. Is that a word?”

“We’ll call it a word. Tom, I don’t know what has happened to me.”

“I tried to tell you.”

“No, I mean on the inside. The whole world seems to have opened up just — well, just at the same time so many doors have been slammed in my face.” He chuckled. “Fine metaphors, Jennilou.”

He saw the new rigidity of her shoulders. She turned and held her hands out to him. Her voice was husky. “Tom, if it wasn’t impossible for us I couldn’t say this. I’d be too shy to say it. But now it is like we’re on opposite sides of a glass wall. Look but don’t touch.

“That’s the most important door that’s closed. You wouldn’t have liked me before, Tom I don’t like what I was. But now — now I’m alive and there isn’t anything for us, is there?”

“There’s this,” he said, indicating with a sweep of his hand the night and the stars.

“But it isn’t enough. I love you, Tom.”

“That’s a word with no adequate scientific definition. It has clinical and physiological symptoms. I hate to use loose words. But there isn’t any other. I love you too, Jennilou.”

Her laugh was too shrill. “But you can’t kiss me. To me you’re a creature made of tissue and slender sticks. Oh, Tom!”

He went to her and put his hands on the warm rigid marble of her shoulders.

The two men from New Mexico were silent as Dickinson drove his car toward the Loma plant.

“You sure Bellbight will be there?” the one called Sherman asked.

“He’ll be there.”

Another mile passed in silence. The other man, Lamont, leaned close to the windows and looked up at the stars. He laughed softly. “Think about it long enough and it’ll scare you to death.”

Dickinson said, “I know what you mean. I know just what you mean.”

“What’s your answer?” McGoran asked.

Dorvan gingerly lifted the cigarette to his lips. He shrugged. “Sounds fine to me. You’ve got it all figured out.”

“How about Weaver?”

“He’ll go along too.”

“Then let’s get out of here. You get the blonde indoctrinated while I talk to Weaver. He’s across the hall, you said.”

“Right across the hall.”

“No tricks, now.”

“Look, McGoran. I didn’t ask to be turned into a freak. So I’ll make everything out of it that I can.”

“Good boy!” McGoran said. “Don’t waste time.”

The P.A. system crackled and Tom recognized Dickinson’s voice. “Report to my office, Tom. Immediately. Important.”

“What’s that about?” Jennilou asked.

He shrugged. “You ready to turn in?”

He led her toward the trap door that opened onto the staircase. Out of habit he took her arm to help her so that she wouldn’t fall. But she could fall without damage. It made him slightly ill to think of it.

They parted under the floodlights and he turned toward the main offices. Jennilou walked slowly toward the wing where they all slept. She walked with her head down.

She walked up the stairs to the second floor and stopped as she heard the low voices, angry voices.

“You’re nuts! Get out of here,” Weaver said loudly.

“Keep your voice down or I’ll shut you up for good.” Jennilou frowned. She didn’t recognize the second voice. It had a dangerous sound to it.

She moved softly to where she could see. Dark figures in the dim hall. A stranger — no, not a stranger. The man from the bus. McGoran!

Another shadow behind him — stealthy. She wanted to scream.

Swirl of motion and the thick thud of fist against flesh and bone. McGoran spun and fell heavily.

As she moved closer she saw Weaver and Dorvan solemnly shaking hands. Dorvan said, “Nice going, boy. You saw me moving in and you didn’t blink an eye.”

Weaver said, “We got to keep our little group from getting a bad name.”

Shirley Sanger came out into the hall, holding a robe around her. Her eyes widened as she saw McGoran.

Dorvan looked up and saw the two of them. He said, “Hi, darling. Hello Jennilou. Look what we got.”

Shirley said in an acid tone, “You’ve got him but can you keep him? What will you tie him up with?”

“Simple,” said Stan Weaver expansively. “Every time he wiggles we pop him again. That’s work I could learn to love. He wanted the four of us to take over the government. A bunch of fancy ideas about supermen. He didn’t want you in on it, Jennilou, and he didn’t want the old lady.”

“Oh, fine!” Shirley said.

McGoran moaned. Stan Weaver said, “My turn.” He chopped McGoran on the side of the jaw with a blow that would have bent quarter inch steel plate. McGoran settled closer to the floor.

“I’ll call Tom — Dr. Bellbight,” Jennilou said. “He’s in Mr. Dickinson’s office.”

Chapter VII

Date with a Star

Dickinson drummed nervously on his desk and looked at his watch with irritation. He buzzed the girl and said, “Haven’t you located Dr. Bellbight yet?”

He forced a smile. The two men from New Mexico sat near the windows. In the four chairs drawn up close to his desk were Jennilou, Shirley, Stan Weaver and Bill Dorvan.

Dickinson cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll begin without Dr. Bellbight. Thanks to Mr. Weaver and Mr. Dorvan we took McGoran into custody ten days ago. He was placed in a cell where the walls carried a heavy enough charge of current to stun him if he touched them. It was quite obvious that McGoran was insane. Four hours ago he died of what apparently was a cerebral hemorrhage.”

Jennilou looked faintly ill. Shirley gasped. Weaver swallowed hard. Dorvan said softly, “As good a way as any.”

“Thus, of the original seven, two are dead. And Mrs. Thompson is out of our reach. Her legal talent is too... ah... fast on its feet. So there are just the four of you. Doubtless you have been puzzled by the tests that you have undergone during the past ten days.”

“To put it mildly,” said Shirley Sanger.

“Dr. Lamont and Mr. Sherman have prescribed those tests. They came here on a hunch. The hunch has paid off. Oh, there you are, Tom. Sit down. I was just getting to the tests. Want to take over?”

Bellbight nodded. He was very pale.

His voice was harsh and nervous as he said, “We have established the fact that you four can stand extremes of heat and cold far in excess of normal. On the whirl test Mr. Dorvan had the best record. He blacked out at thirty-one G’s. To the human in perfect physical condition twelve G’s usually results in serious internal injuries, temporary blindness, sometimes death. Take over, Dr. Lamont.”

Lamont stood up and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. He had an ugly, likeable face. “In New Mexico we do not publish our little triumphs. Our work is top secret. However, this is so important to us that I must divulge to you certain topsecret information.

“Fourteen months ago we put a small rocket in orbit around the earth. First practical application of atomic power for rocket propulsion. We used a booster set-up with chemical fuel to clear the atmosphere, then a hard burst of atomic drive to take the speed up to the necessary five miles per second to establish the rocket as a satellite of earth.

“Six months ago, using the same technique, we drove a rocket to the moon. That meant achieving a take-off speed of seven miles per second. Our press releases speak of achieving hundred-mile altitudes. Believe me, they are enormous understatements.

“Now we have come to a barrier. That particular barrier is the limitation on unmanned rockets. Until two weeks ago we thought it an insuperable obstacle. Take-off speed would pulp the average human. But you people could stand it.

“I have four releases here. I will not attempt to sell you anything. Frankly, we want to take the four of you to New Mexico. You’ll get no publicity. There will be no medals. I can’t promise that you’ll live through the flights.

“There will be a year of training while the rockets are under construction. If all goes well, which it probably won’t, you’ll be the first humans in space. So your choice is either to continue to exist here as sort of laboratory animals or come to New Mexico and have something to do with what I like to call mankind’s manifest destiny.”

He sat down. Jennilou said softly, “No! No, I can’t leave.”

Weaver shrugged. “Brother, once you’ve driven an interurban bus, you can stand anything. I’d like a change in routes. Get your moon transfers here. Step to the rear of the rocket, please.”

“Funny like a crutch,” Shirley said. She turned and put her hand on Bill Dorvan’s arm. “It’s a corny old line, William, but whither thou goest—”

Dorvan smiled weakly. “We’ll take two of those papers, Doc.”

“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” Shirley said softly.

Bellbight said suddenly, his voice still tense, “Before you sign you’d better know that it’s going to be more than that.”

“Shut up, Tom!” Dickinson said.

“You can’t shut me up. Listen. It isn’t going to be any little trip of a week or a month. At first, yes. But not later. And for the last little jaunt you may go so far that a lifetime won’t be long enough to make a round trip.

“You ought to know that. You ought to know that you may live out what remains of your life in the hulk of a rocket resting on some unknown world. You’ll be pioneers, certainly. But there won’t be any cakes and ale.”

Lamont said angrily. “What are you trying to do, Bellbight.”

Tom’s voice was so low as to be almost a whisper. “It’s hard to understand some things. Why should that transmitter have tipped when it did? Who can either affirm or deny some definite plan in the universe?

“Are we nasty little freaks of nature, biological accidents, running around in our mechanical anthill just prior to blowing it to bits, or is there something, some force, some entity that watches over us, that makes a transmitter tip, that creates a new form of man strong enough to weather space?

“For ten days I’ve been reading genetics. You know what, Lamont? This aberration goes deep. Bill and Shirley are in love. They’ll breed true. That’s one of your questions, isn’t it? I’d stake my life on the answer to that one.”

“Very noble language, Bellbight,” Sherman said wryly.

“Staking my life?” Tom said. He laughed. “I’m talking like this, you see, because I know all the facts. Ten days ago somebody talked about a glass wall. They couldn’t get through it or over it. So I began to wonder if I could cross over to her side.”

“Tom!” Jennilou said.

He was at her side in two long strides. He tilted her chin up roughly and bruised her lips with his. He straightened up. “So it can be done, you see. It was a gamble I had to take. I’ll leave complete records here, Dick, so that you can duplicate it without killing the patient.”

“Leave?” Dickinson said in a dazed tone. “Where?”

“Dick, you’re being dull! Shirley talked about whither thou goest. That phrase makes sense to me. Jennilou and I have a date with a star.”

“It would be a good thing to have a physicist in the crew,” Sherman said slowly.

Weaver stood up and leaned across the desk.

He waved his finger under Dickinson’s nose. He said, “My Madge is a miserable woman. She’s got a voice like a rusty crosscut saw but I miss her like the devil. What Tom can do to himself you can do to Madge. So help me, I’ll talk her into it. If you say no, Dickinson, I’ll take this whole plant apart with my bare hands. And don’t think I can’t.”

“Better agree, Dick,” Tom said.

“Okay,” Dickinson said weakly.

Shirley was the one who wrapped it up. She looked at Jennilou’s glowing face and then she looked into Bill Dorvan’s eyes.

She said softly, “A big blonde going nowhere fast. That was Shirley. And then I’m a freak. At least it was a change. And now, all of a sudden, I’m no freak. All of a sudden I feel as if this was meant to be. It makes me feel proud — and kind of humble. Kids, let’s go buy some of the toughest steaks in town.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Journey for Seven

Chapter I The Characters

Chapter II The Invulnerable

Chapter III Eating Cobwebs

Chapter IV Hell to Pay

Chapter V Folk of Iron

Chapter VI Angry Voices

Chapter VII Date with a Star