THE ENORMOUS WORD
By WILLIAM OBERFIELD
The blue men had ravaged Terra and reduced
Winston Eberly to a contemptible insect.
Now here he was, complaining of indigestion!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1950.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Hurry! Hurry! Run as fast as you can go to the big tree! Crouch beneathits branches and hide, staring up through its open spaces to see ifanything is glinting in the clear sky. Anything there? Oh God, yes! No,it's only a bird, a small cloud drifting. Now! Dash madly, crawl onyour belly, fight on to the next place of concealment!
Winston Eberly knew he was talking to himself, but he didn't give adamn. He was sweating and sick from exertion, half mad with burningthirst and bleeding from an unknown number of cuts and scratches, butthat didn't matter either. The only thing that had any real meaning orvalue was the stuff in the box in his pocket.
He slapped the pocket with a dirt-encrusted hand. "Good old box! Goodold U-235!" he mumbled feverishly. "You'll pull us out of this messwe're in. You'll show the blasted men from space they're not playingwith children!"
Pausing in shadows he looked again at the sky. All blue and quiet.Nothing stirring up there, nothing glinting. But they were there allright; they were always there. Maybe they were in the stratosphere,maybe above it, or about to streak low across the sky from horizon tohorizon in the twinkling of an eye.
Men from space. Hateful, sadistic, repulsive men from outer space!Oh, how overbearing they were; how greedy and cruel and how sure ofthemselves! They had reason to be confident, of course. They had simplystood far off in space and shrouded the entire world in a terribleradiation that brought unconsciousness to all and death to many. Andsomething in that radiation had sought out every particle of refinedUranium and Hiroshimaized the world.
One had to respect that power, if not admire it. Even now, they couldbring quick death to every single Earthman by simply pressing abutton somewhere in their one established city, in the Sahara Desert.Clever. It seemed they could do anything. Why wouldn't electric andinternal combustion motors run since the coming of the space men? Moreimportant, how could their high-flying ships detect even the slightestunauthorized action on the ground below?
They had the world in their power, right enough, and even darknessbrought the Earthmen no chance to strike back. The invaders calledtheir ships back to the Sahara at dusk and at dusk all good littleEarthmen went to bed, or went strangely to sleep where they stood.
Eberly called an end to his watchful reflections and darted into theopen again like a frightened doe. This was the only chance and here,between the hidden place where determined men had worked tirelessly andingeniously to refine only a small capsule of pure Uranium in a yearand the hidden place where other learned men waited to incorporate theproduct into an atomic bomb that could destroy the city of the invaderscompletely, lay the greatest danger of defeat.
As he stumbled on toward his goal he cursed the power that made allmodern conveyances impossible. This snail's pace across open country,under the cosmic microscope of the alien invaders, was maddening, withso much at stake. But it was no more so than the task of mining andrefining ore or that of constructing an atomic bomb without the aid ofmodern machinery, no more so than being forced to live practically likewild animals as all must now do.
He swore to himself that a way would be—had to be—found to get thatweapon ac