Atomic - Chapter 1: The Eye

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter one of Atomic. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Atomic by
Henry Kuttner, Chapter one the Ie. The alarm went off
just after midnight. The red signal showed emergency, but it

(00:22):
was always emergency. At first, we all knew that ever
since the arachnid tribe in the Chicago Ring had mutated,
we'd known better than to take chances. That time, the
human race had very nearly gone under Not many people
knew how close we'd been to extinction, but I knew
everybody in biological control labs knew.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
To any one who lived.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Before the Three Hour War, such things would have sounded
incredible even to us. Now they sound hard to believe,
but we know there are four hundred and three rings
scattered all over the world, and every one of them
is potentially deadly. Our lab was nor off of what
had been Yonkers and was a deserted, ruinous wilderness. Now,

(01:04):
the atomic bomb of six years ago hadn't hit Yonkers,
of course, what it struck was New York. The radiation
spread far enough to wipe out Yonkers, in the towns
beyond it, and inland as far as white planes. But
everyone who lived through the three hour war knows what
the bomb did in the New York area. The war
ended incredibly fast, but what lingered afterward made the real danger,

(01:28):
the time bomb that may quite easily lead to the
wiping out of our whole civilization. We don't know yet.
All we can do is keep the labs going and
the planes out watching. That's the menace, the mutations. It
was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report
on the office ticker, punched a few buttons, and turned

(01:48):
around to look at Bob Davidson, the new hand. He'd
been here for two weeks, mostly learning the ropes. My
assistant Williams was due for a vacation, and I had
about decided to take young David's and on as a substitute.
Want to go out and look it over, Dave, I asked, sure,
that's the red alarm, isn't it emergency? I pulled a

(02:09):
mic forward send up relief men, I ordered and wake
Williams to take over. Get the retcon copter ready red flight.
Then I turned to Davidson, It'll be routine I told him,
unless something unexpected happens.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Not much data yet.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
The sky scanner showed a cave in in some activity
around it. Maybe nothing, but we can't take chances. It's
Ring seventy twelve. That's where the airliner crashed last week,
isn't it, Dave asked, looking up with renewed interest. Any
dope yet on what became of the passengers.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
The radiations would have got them if nothing else did.
That's in the closed file now, poor devils. Still we
might spot the ship.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
I stood up.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
The whole thing may be a wild goose chase, but
we never.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Take any chances. With the rings.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
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 dot the world now,
But in the days before the war, no one could
have imagined such a thing as a ring, and it
would be hard to make anyone visualize one through bare description.
You have to feel the desolation as you fly over
that center of bare, splashed rock, in which nothing may

(03:17):
ever grow again until the planet itself disintegrates, and see
around that dead core the violently boiling life of the ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers
of death. The sun forces unleashed by the bombs gave
life a new, strange, mutable life that changed and changed
and changed, and would go on changing until a balance

(03:40):
was finally struck again. On this world, which for three
hours reeled in space under the blows of an almost
cosmic disaster, we were still shuddering beneath the aftermath of
those blows. The balance was not yet. When the hour
of balance comes, mankind may no longer be the dominant race.
That's why we keep such a close watch on all

(04:01):
the rings. From time to time, we worked them over
with flame throwers. Only atomic power, of course, would quiet
that seething life permanently, Which is no solution. We've got
rings enough right now without resulting to more Adam bombs.
It's a hydra headed problem without an answer. All we
can do is watch, be ready. The world was still dark,

(04:25):
but the ring itself was light, with a strange, pale,
luminous radiance that might mean anything.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
It was new, that was all we knew about it.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yet, Let's have the scanner, I said to Davidson. He
handed me the mask and I pushed the head clips
past my ears and settled the monocular viewplate before my eyes,
expecting to see the darkness melt into the reversed vision
of the night scanner. It melted, all right, the part
that didn't matter. I could see the negative images of
trees and ruined houses standing ghostly pale against the dark,

(04:55):
but within the ring nothing. It wasn't good. It could
be very bad. Indeed, in silence, I pulled off the
mask and handed it to Davidson, watched him look down.
When he turned, I could see his troubled frown through
the monocular lens even before he lowered the scanner. He
looked a little pale in the light of the instrument board. Well,

(05:16):
he asked, looks as if they'd hit on something good
this time, I said, they. Who knows, could be anything
this time? You know how the life forms shoot up
into mutations without the least warning. Something's done. And again
down there, maybe something that's been quietly working away underground
for a long time, just waiting for the right moment.

(05:36):
Whatever it is, they can stop the scanners, and that
isn't an easy thing to do. The first boys over,
reported a caven. Davidson said, peering futilely down.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Could you see anything?

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Just the luminous fog, nothing inside, total blackout. Well, maybe
daylight will show us what's up, I hope.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
So it didn't.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
A low sea of yellow gray fog billowed slowly in
a vast circle over the entire ring as far as
we could see. Dead central core and outer circle of
unnatural life had vanished together into that mist, which no
instrument we had could penetrate. And we've developed a lot
of stuff for seeing through fog and darkness.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
This was solid.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
We couldn't crack it. We'll land, I told Davidson. Finally,
something's going on behind that shield, something that doesn't want
to be spied on, and somebody's got to investigate fast.
It might as well be us. We wore the latest
development in the way of lead suits, flexible and easy
on the body. We snapped our face plates shut as
the ground came up to meet us, and the little

(06:38):
Geiger counter each of us carried began to tick erratically,
like a sort of Morse code, mechanically spelling out the
death in the air we sank through. I was measuring
the ground below for a landing when Davidson grabbed my shoulder,
suddenly pointing down.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Look. His voice came.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Tintly through the ear diaphragms in my helmet. I looked, Now,
this is where the story he gets difficult to tell.
I know what I saw. That much was clear to
me from start to finish. I saw an eye looking
up through the pale mist of us. But whether it
was an enormous lens far below or a normal sized
eye close to us, I couldn't have said. Just then,

(07:16):
my distant sense had stopped functioning. I stared into the eye.
The next thing I remember is sitting in the familiar
lab office, across the desk from Williams, hearing myself speaking.
No signs of activity anywhere in the ring, perfectly normal.
There's that lake, of course, Davidson interrupted, in a conscientious voice.
I looked at him. He was turning his cap over

(07:38):
and over in his hands as he sat there by
the wall. His pink cheeked face was haggard, and there
was something strained and dazed in the glance he turned
to meet mine. I knew I looked dazed too. It
was like waking out of a dream, knowing you've dreamed,
knowing you're awake now. But having the dream go on,
being powerless to stop it. I wanted to jump up

(07:59):
and sleep my fist on the desk and shout that
all this was phony. I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Something like a tremendously.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Powerful psychic inhibition held me down. The room swam before
me for a moment with my effort to break free,
and I met Davidson's eyes and saw the same swimming
strain in them. It wasn't hypnosis. We didn't win our
posts and bio control until we'd been through exhaustive tests
and a lot of heavy training. None of us are

(08:27):
hypnosis prone. We can't afford to be. It's been tried.
We can't be hypnotized except under very special circumstances, safeguarded
by bio control itself. No, the answer wasn't that easy.
It seemed to lie in myself. Some door had slammed
in the center of my brain to shut in vital
information that must not escape yet under any circumstances at all.

(08:52):
The minute I hit on that analogy, I knew I
was on the right trail. I felt safer and surer
of myself. Whatever had happened in that blood just past,
my instinct was in control now I could trust that
instinct breakthrough. Just as the boys reported, Davidson was saying,
that must be what started the lake pouring up. Nothing

(09:12):
stirring there now, though I suppose the regular sky scanners
are watching it. His glance crossed mine, and I knew
he was right. I knew he was talking to me,
not Williams. Of course, the lake couldn't be hidden now
that it was out in plain sight. We couldn't make
a worse mistake than to rouse interests in ourselves in
the lake by telling obvious lies about it.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
What lake?

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Like a mirage? Swimming slowly back through my mind, the
single memory came ourselves standing on the raw, bare rock
of the deathly ring center, looking through.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
A rift of mist, like a broad, low window, a
mile long and not very high.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
The lake was incredibly blue in the dawn, incredibly calm.
Beyond it, a wall of cliff stretched left and right
beyond our vision, a wall like a great curtain of
rock hanging in majestic folds, and the pink dawn looming
about its perfect image reflected.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
In the mirror of the lake.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
The mirage dissolved that much I could remember no more.
There was a lake we had stood on its rocky shore, and.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Then what reason told me?

Speaker 1 (10:16):
We must have seen something, or heard or learned something
that made the lake a deadly danger to mankind. I
knew that feel of naked terror deep in my mind
must have a cause. But all I could do now
was follow my instinct. The basic human instincts, I told
myself are self preservation and preservation of the species. If
I rely on that foundation, I can't go wrong. But

(10:39):
I didn't know how long I'd been back here. I
didn't know how much I had said, or how little
what orders I'd given to my subordinates, or whether anything
in my outward aspect had roused any suspicion. Yet I
looked around, and this time gave a perfectly genuine start
of surprise. Except for Williams and myself, the office was
quite empty, and this last bout with my daydreaming memory,

(11:01):
I must really have lost touch with things. Williams was
looking at me with curiosity suspicion. I rode to my eyes,
put weariness in my voice. I'm tired, I said, I
almost dozed off, and I will The sound of the
ticker behind Williams interrupted my alibi. I knew in a
moment what was happening. A televised report had come into

(11:23):
my own office, which my secretary was switching to the
ticker for me. That meant it was important. It also meant,
as I had reason to hope an instant later, that
the visor was shut off in my office and the
news clicking directly here for our eyes alone. Leaning over
Williams's shoulder, I read the tape, feeding through it read
unidentified activities in progress around New Ring Lake suggest destroyer's

(11:48):
work over area, Fitzgerald. The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
Only one thing stood clear, and my mind's confusion. This
must not happen. There was some terrible, some deadly danger
to the whole fabric of civilization, and Fitzgerald's message reached
any other eyes than ours.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
I had to do something fast.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Williams was rereading the tape. He glanced up at me
across his shoulder. Fitz is right, he said, of course,
can't let anything get started down there. Better wipe it
out right now, hadn't we?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
I said no, so.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Explosively that he froze in the act of reaching for
the interoffice switch.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (12:28):
He stared at me in surprise. I opened my mouth
and closed it again, hopelessly, knowing the right words wouldn't
come to me. It seems so self evident. I couldn't
even explain why we must disregard the message. It would
be like trying to tell a man why he mustn't
touch off an adam baumb out of sheer exuberance. The
reasons were so many and so obvious. I couldn't choose
among them. You weren't there.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
You don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
My voice sounded thick and unsteady, even to myself.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Fitz is wrong. Let that lake alone, Williams.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
No.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
He gave me a strange look.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Still, I've got to record the report. Headquarters will make
the final decision. And he reached again for the switch.
I am not sure how far I would have gone
towards stopping him. Instinct Deeper than all reasons, seemed to
exploded me in the urgent forward surge that brought me
to my feet. I had to stop him now, without delay,
taking no time to delve into my mind and dredge

(13:23):
up a reason he would accept as valid. But the
decision was taken out of our hands. A burst of
soundless white fire flashed blindingly across my eyes. It blotted
out Williams, It blotted out the ticker with its innocent,
deadly message. I was aware of a killing pain in
the very center of my skull. End of Chapter one,

(13:44):
read by Elsie Selwyn