Chapter IV

That was a bad evening for Ed Dukas. He left Barbara at her house, which was now guarded. But he did not get home easily. For that was the evening trouble became general. John Jones of old-time flesh and blood, and George Smith of vitaplasm forgot all their politeness and let their smoldering thoughts come to the surface:

“So now you brew up monsters like yourselves, to attack us. I wouldn’t be like you if it was the last way to be alive.”

“Oh, no, brother? Those creatures must be yours. What makes you so good? Born with your own hide, eh? The elite. With jelly for insides, and a mean nature.”

Talk swiftly led to flying fists. But who could hurt an android with a human fist? Before their hardened knuckles a human jaw could become mush. Still, there were heavier primitive weapons. Then, by progression, weapons that were not so primitive.

Ed didn’t try any more to quell the trouble. He watched it, walked around it and away from it. The wise and careful thinking that he had been taught to believe in seemed to have deserted his kind. The stars were only a remote fancy, lost in the chaos of local emotion. Feeling beaten, Ed finally got home.

This was the evening when he told himself that anything could happen at any moment--that morning might not even come. On the newscast, he heard the report that the first star ship--to be aimed perhaps at Proxima Centauri or Sirius--was within weeks of completion out there on its asteroid. There were infinite heights to this era of his. And terrifying depths.

This was the evening when, fearing that the spoken word could no longer be heard through the din of clashing hatreds, Ed Dukas decided to write letters.

He meant to begin with a letter to Les and then write to his father, whose eyes had turned backward toward archaic simplicities. He wanted to write to Granger, asking again for calm. But he had only completed a few paragraphs to Les when that kid nickname of his appeared on a blank sheet of his paper. From nowhere:

“Nipper.“

Only Mitchell Prell, unheard from for ten years, had ever called him that. His uncle. A likable little man, tainted by accusations, but part of the once thrilling thoughts of the future. Mitchell Prell had belonged to the onward surging and reaching of science--and its stumbling. The lunar blowup had come as a forerunner of the first leap to the stars. And the human-and-android animosity had resulted from the mastery of the forces of life. Wonder becoming horror. White turning black. Till you hardly knew what to believe in, except that, being alive, you had to go on trying to make things right.

For an hour Ed Dukas sat in his room. Nothing more appeared on the paper which he had clamped under his microscope. “Nipper.“ That was all. Silly name of his childhood. Often he looked around him, as though expecting someone to appear. Several times he said softly, “Uncle Mitch, you must be here, someplace...”

There was no answer.

The muttering tumult in the streets--the shouts, the occasional rush of feet, the curses and yells--masked the arrival of Tom Granger. Ed was startled from his preoccupation to find Granger almost at his elbow. With him was a man who looked like a plain-clothes police official. In the background, grim and frightened, was Ed’s mother.

“Eddie,” she said. “If you know anything, tell. Mitch just isn’t worth any more trouble to us.”

“Tell what?” Ed demanded, rising.

“About where Mitchell Prell is,” Granger told him. “You said things which hinted that he might be around.”

Ed’s throat tightened. It was still a minor shock to remember that the probe beam had probably been used on this house sporadically for years. The refined radar of the probe beam could, if minutely focused, make fair pictures of distant things inside walls. But Ed didn’t think that it could make the small print on a sheet of letter paper readable. But there were instruments that could pick up faint sounds from miles away--a voice, for instance--and amplify them to audibility. Ed was still sure that, over distance, his mind itself remained inviolable.

Ed felt cornered by the brute forces that always take over whenever reason is broken down by fear. Once his uncle had been a scapegoat to blame for disaster. Then, poor memories and triumphant years had half forgiven him. But now, during trouble, he was guilty again. And according to savage concepts of justice so were his relatives.

The confusion of half blaming his uncle left Ed and was replaced by stubborn loyalty. He summoned all his self-control and grinned carefully. He wondered if the fright in Granger’s large eyes reflected realization at last of the angry hands, gone completely untrustworthy, that now touched the controls of modern science. Was he getting intelligent so late? Or was he afraid of something simpler?

Ed forced a laugh. “You picked up my muttering, Granger,” he accused. “I wonder what you mutter about, these days? Grant me the same privilege of nervousness under strain which you could do a lot to relieve, everywhere, as I have been begging you to see. No, I don’t know where Mitchell Prell is, though I wish I did.”

The plain-clothes man had moved over to the table. Now he peered into the microscope. Soon he motioned to Granger to do likewise. Ed felt the roots of his hair puckering.

“What does ‘Nipper‘ signify to you, Dukas?” Granger asked at last, levelly.

“Suppose it’s my pet name for you, Granger?” Ed answered. “Your friend can take the paper along. The police laboratories might make something else of it. Maybe I doodle with a bum pen and absent-mindedly stick the doodle under a microscope--and right away somebody wants to make a story of it. You want to psyche me? I’ve humored that kind of whim from the police before. This time, for cussedness, I’ll stand on my rights and demand that they get a court order before they meddle with my most private possession, my memory. Especially since hotheads and hysterics seem to have taken over. But wait, Granger. I’m sure that sensible people are still in the majority. They haven’t reacted very much, yet. But they will--with matters as bad as they are now. Maybe they haven’t any answers to our problems, except calm and the hope of working something out. But that’s a lot. We were schooled to cautious thinking, Granger, and that means something, even though you and plenty of others can lose their wits. Maybe the sensible people will finally shut you up!”

“We’ll take the paper along all right,” the plain-clothes man said. “And you, too. We already have the court order you mention.”

“Dukas,” Granger said with a show of great patience, “will you ever realize? We’re facing a soulless horror. We must be harsh if need be. But you should be glad to give your absolute co-operation. It’s your duty. We have always felt that Prell is alive, somewhere. Twice he has been part of disaster, even if unintentionally. We must stop him before he can bring us greater, unknown dangers.”

Ed eyed this thin, wily man who had managed to assume a certain unofficial power in the world. And again Ed had trouble judging him. Perhaps he was entirely insincere. Yet he had, too, the marks of the rabid crusader following obsolete themes that needed revision; following them blindly, with both a kind of courage and the crassest stupidity.

“Tell me something, Granger,” Ed said. “I’m curious. And I know I have a duty, however different from what you mean. Did you have a hand in the creation of the monsters of vitaplasm? I mean the real monsters, not just the androids, the Phonies. The use of terror is old in war and politics. Stirring up fury, with the blame carefully implied elsewhere.”

Granger’s features stiffened, as if he had been insulted, or perhaps he was just acting. “I would not dirty my hands with things from hell, Dukas!” he snapped. “Unwise as you are, you must know that! Now I think the police want to take you away.”

Ed’s mother stood in the doorway of his room without saying a word. She looked strong, yet bitter and scared. He knew that her loyalty was with him, though her views differed somewhat from his.

His father must have been out of the house when Granger and the other man arrived, Ed thought. Did his going out on this chaotic evening mean anything special? Wanting to be loyal, and at least half sure that the wish was returned, Ed didn’t care to complete the thought.

He was concerned about his mother, yet he said, “Try not to worry, Mom. Go to bed. They’ll have to guard the house. I can still insist on it. And I don’t think I can be held very long, even now.”