ATOMIC!
By HENRY KUTTNER
Illustrated by Virgil Finlay.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What nuclear war may do to the world
we know is a closed book to mankind—but
here’s what coming eras may bring!
CHAPTER I
The Eye
The alarm went off just after midnight. The red signal showed emergency.But it was always emergency at first. We all knew that. Ever since thearachnid tribe in the Chicago Ring had mutated we’d known better than totake chances. That time the human race had very nearly gone under. Notmany people knew how close we’d been to extinction. But I knew.
Everybody in Biological Control Labs knew. To anyone who lived beforethe Three-Hour War such things would have sounded incredible. Even to usnow they sound hard to believe. But we know.
There are four hundred and three Rings scattered all over the world andevery one of them is potentially deadly.
Our Lab was north of what had been Yonkers and was a deserted, ruinouswilderness now. The atomic bomb of six years ago hadn’t hit Yonkers ofcourse. What it struck was New York. The radiation spread far enough towipe out Yonkers and the towns beyond it, and inland as far as WhitePlains—but everyone who lived through the Three-Hour War knows what thebomb did in the New York area.
The war ended incredibly fast. But what lingered afterward made the realdanger, the time-bomb that may quite easily lead to the wiping out ofour whole civilization. We don’t know yet. All we can do is keep theLabs going and the planes out watching.
That’s the menace—the mutations.
It was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report on theoffice ticker, punched a few buttons and turned around to look at BobDavidson, the new hand. He’d been here for two weeks, mostly learningthe ropes.
My assistant, Williams, was due for a vacation and I had about decidedto take young Davidson on as a substitute.
“Want to go out and look it over, Dave?” I asked.
“Sure. That’s a red alarm, isn’t it? Emergency?”
I pulled a mike forward.
“Send up relief men,” I ordered, “and wake Williams to take over. Getthe recon copter ready. Red flight.” Then I turned to Davidson.
“It’ll be routine,” I told him, “unless something unexpected happens.Not much data yet. The sky-scanners showed a cave-in and some activityaround it. May be nothing but we can’t take chances. It’s RingSeventy-Twelve.”
“That’s where the air liner crashed last week, isn’t it?” Dave asked,looking up with renewed interest. “Any dope yet on what became of thepassengers?”
“Nothing. The radiations would have got them if nothing else did. That’sin the closed file now, poor devils. Still, we might spot the ship.” Istood up. “The whole thing may be a wild-goose chase but we never takeany chances with the Rings.”
“It ought to be interesting, anyhow,” Dave said and followed me out.
We could see it from a long way off. Four hundred and three of them dotthe world now, but in the days before the War no one could have imaginedsuch a thing as a Ring and it would be hard to make anyone visualize onethrough bare description. You have to feel the desolation as you flyover that center of bare, splashed rock in which nothing may ever growagain until the planet itself disintegrates, and see around that deadcore the violently boiling life of the Ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers of death. Thesun-forces unleashed by the bombs gave life, a new, strange, mutablelife that