AN ESCAPE

Taylor ordered Pember and Norden to bury Orkins where he had been digging, then the officer took Masters aside.

“We’ve got a weapon,” Taylor announced.

Masters grunted:

“Yeah? Indians had bows and arrows, too. Look at what happened to them.”

“This is different. A new weapon. We can beat the spheres through their emotions.”

“You mean fear, love, hate all that stuff? How do you know these spheres have emotions?”

“What is life but a series of sensations and emotions? If the spheres are alive, they must have something which correspond to emotions. The emotions may be different from ours, but they’ll be emotions just the same. Orkins died of fear. Of course, you can call it heart attack, but fear brought it on. That sphere that had me cornered in the plant died, too. Do you see?”

“Was the sphere afraid of you or the tunnel?”

“Don’t be flippant. The emotion wasn’t fear. It might not have been any emotion we have, but an emotion that we’d expect a creature made of energy to have. An emotion of frustration! It had me cornered. I escaped. The energy sphere met resistance. When energy meets resistance it changes!”

“I don’t get it.”

“Look, Masters. If the spheres are mixtures of energies, like we are mixtures of chemicals, death means extinction, just as biological death means the extinction of the chemical action in our lives. Theologians say we don’t die that there’s a change and we go on existing in a spiritual life. Now let’s take a peep at what science tells us about energy: Newton says energy is never extinguished. When it ceases in one form, it changes to another. What happens when you run electricity through a resistance coil?”

“It turns to heat, of course!”

“And when you enclose light where it can’t escape?”

“It turns to heat!” Masters’ face brightened. “And if you pen up heat, it turns to light. I learned that in school. Resistance causes a change. But what do the spheres turn to?”

“Radio energy, Masters! Something absolutely harmless to man. These living, energy spheres will change to radio energy when they meet resistance. Frustration is resistance. Frustration is an emotion. An overwhelming emotion for the spheres! The sphere is frustrated meets resistance it disappears. In other words, it dies!”

From the city came screams and cries. The spheres had attacked at last.

The men in the wooded field could see the darting balls sending their searing bolts down on the heads of hapless victims. The crashing roar of the slaughter sounded like distant thunderstorms.

Streets were jammed with panic-stricken human beings, fleeing from the unknown menace which slashed with bolts of heat energy.

From the hole in the factory roof poured more spheres to join the destruction.

“They breed fast, the devils!” said Masters.

A figure in khaki approached Taylor. It was Pember with blood running from a cut on the side of his head. He saluted briskly.

“Norden escaped, sir!” he blurted. “The dirty so-and-so cracked me over the head with the trench tool and got away!”

“I never thought he’d turn yellow,” Masters said. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing he’s gone. I never trusted him anyhow.”

“Which way did he go?” Taylor asked.

“He went toward the factory, sir!” Pember replied. “He didn’t knock me out. Just a glancing blow. I was too dazed to stop him, but I saw him running toward the factory.”

“He’d rather take it that way than the firing squad, I guess,” Masters decided.

“Masters,” Taylor said. “We overlooked something. Norden knows something we don’t know. He was around Orkins most of the time after we left the plant. He listened to what Orkins said. Orkins was in the factory when the spheres first appeared. I overlooked Orkins as having an answer to the problem. I thought I knew it all, but I was wrong! Orkins knew more than I know about the spheres.”

“Sure! I should have thought of it, too. How did Orkins get away when everyone else got killed? I never asked that. I just took it for granted that he got away by accident. Orkins might have known enough to help Norden get the spheres on his side!”

Taylor already was running toward the factory. At his heels came Masters and Pember.