Night descended, but in his hideaway Johnny had difficulty sleeping. Plans for attacking the bungalow swarmed like bees through his mind. He knew a night raid would be impossible because his eyesight was especially poor at night and because all four of his enemies would be together through the dark hours.
At sunrise, Johnny saw the two tough fellows start up the little engine and begin to inflate more balloons. Making a long detour, he sneaked up to the bungalow from the far side and crawled under the house. Like most houses in the Virgin Islands, the building had no cellar. He crept around softly until the scrape of feet on the thin floor above told him he was directly under the men within. Bemis was talking.
"... and those fools are caught in Havana with no way of getting down here, because transportation all over the Caribbean is tied up by now."
A British voice answered, "I suppose that in time it will occur to them to go to the owner of a boat or plane and simply tell the chap to bring them here. That's the only thing for them to do with everybody in Cuba under the influence of the molds by now, what? How many more balloons should we send up?"
"All we have," replied Bemis.
"But, I say, oughtn't we keep some in reserve? It wouldn't do to have to spend the rest of our lives sending spores up into the stratosphere, in the hope that the cosmic rays will give us another mutation like this one."
"I said we'll send up all the balloons, not all the spores, Forney. I have plenty of those in reserve, and I'm growing more from my molds all the time. Anyway, suppose we did run out of molds before all the world is infected—which it will be in a few weeks. There wasn't one chance in a million of that first mutation, yet it happened. That's how I know it was a sign from above. I have been chosen to lead the world out of its errors and confusions, and I shall do it. The Lord gave me this power over the world, and He shall not fail me!"
So, thought Johnny, that was it. He knew that Bemis was an expert on molds. The botanist must have sent a load of them up into the stratosphere where the cosmic rays could work on them. One of the mutations thereby produced had the ability to attack the human brain when the spores were inhaled and to destroy the victim's willpower. And now Bemis was broadcasting these mold spores all over the world so that he could take charge of Earth and order the inhabitants to do whatever he wished. And the man was mad.
Still, since Bemis and his assistants were not affected by the spores, there must be an antidote of some sort, and Bemis must keep it handy. If only he could force Bemis to tell where it was... but that wasn't practical.
One of the men working on the balloons said, "Ten o'clock, Bert. Time to go for the mail."
"Won't be no mail, Jim boy. Everybody in Frederiksted's sitting around, looking dopey."
"Yeah, that's so. We ought to start organizing them before they all croak of starvation. We've got to have somebody to work for us."
"All right, smart guy, you go ahead and organize. Suppose you try to get the telephone service workin' again, while I have a smoke."
From beneath the house, Johnny saw one pair of booted legs disappear into the truck, which presently rolled out of the driveway. The other pair of legs settled themselves on the front steps.
Johnny remembered a sea almond tree behind the bungalow with a trunk that passed close to the eaves. Four minutes later, he padded silently across the roof and looked down on the smoker. As Bert threw away his cigarette and stood up, Johnny's five hundred steel-muscled pounds landed on his back and flung him prone. Before he could fill his lungs to shout, the bear's paw landed with a pop on the side of his head. Bert quivered and subsided, his skull looking peculiarly lopsided.
Johnny listened; the house was quiet. But the man called Jim would soon be coming back in the truck. Johnny dragged the corpse under the house. Then, cautiously opening the screen door with his paws, he stole in, holding his claws up so that they would not click against the floor. He quickly located the room from which Bemis' voice wafted through the half-opened door.
Johnny slowly pushed the door open. The botanist's laboratory was full of flowerpots, glass cases of plants, and chemical apparatus. Bemis and the young Englishman were sitting at the far end, talking animatedly.
Johnny was halfway across the room before they saw him. They jumped up, Forney crying, "Good Gad!" Bemis gave one awful shriek as Johnny's right paw, working like an ice-cream scoop, tore into his abdomen. Bemis, now a horrible sight, tried to walk, then to crawl, then sank into a pool of his own blood.
Forney snatched up a chair, hoping to fend off Johnny like a lion tamer in a circus. Johnny, however, was not a lion. He rose five feet tall on his hind legs and batted the chair across the room, where it came to rest with a crash of glass. Forney broke for the door, but Johnny was on his back before he had gone three steps.
Johnny wondered how to dispose of Jim when he returned. The bear knew the man was armed, and he had a healthy dread of stopping another bullet. Then he noticed four automatic rifles in the umbrella stand in the hall. He opened the breech of one gun, found that it was loaded, then positioned himself behind a window that commanded a view of the driveway. When Jim got out of the truck, he never knew what hit him.
Johnny next set out to find the antidote for the spores. Bemis' desk seemed a logical place to start. Although the desk was locked and made of sheet steel, it was not designed to keep out a determined and resourceful bear. Johnny hooked his claws under the lowest drawer, braced himself, and heaved. The steel bent, and the drawer pulled forward. The others responded in turn. In the third drawer, he found a biggish squat bottle and two hypodermic syringes. Putting on his spectacles, he read "Potassium iodide."
This was the antidote, he decided, and it worked by injection. But how was a bear to work it? He carefully extracted the bottle stopper with his teeth and tried to fill one of the syringes. By holding the barrel of the device between his paws, and working the plunger with his mouth, he at last succeeded.
Carrying the syringe in his mouth, Johnny trotted back to the Station. He found Professor Mettin, still in his underwear, sitting in the kitchen dreamily eating the scraps left by the plug-uglies' raid. The others were utterly helpless without orders and would sit like vegetables until they starved.
Johnny tried to inject the solution into Mettin's calf, holding the syringe crosswise in his teeth and pushing the plunger with a paw. But at the prick of the needle, the man jerked away. When the bear held the man down, he squirmed so that the syringe broke.
A discouraged black bear cleaned up the broken glass. He knew that soon he would be the only thinking being left on Earth who had any initiative at all. He did not much care what happened to the human race, but he did have a certain affection for his lanky boss. Moreover, he didn't like the idea of spending the rest of his life rustling his own food like an ordinary wild animal. Such an existence would be far too dull for a bear of his intelligence.
So Johnny returned to Bemis' bungalow and brought back both the bottle and the remaining hypodermic syringe. He considered knocking one of the scientists unconscious and injecting him, but he did not know how hard to hit a human in order to stun without killing. He dared not try any rough stuff for fear of breaking the only remaining syringe.
Johnny sat down to think. Suddenly, he had an idea. In their present state, the humans would do anything they were told. If someone ordered one of them to pick up the syringe and inject himself, he would do it. But Johnny couldn't talk. His attempt to say "Pick up the syringe" came out as "Fee-feekopp feef-feef," and the Professor looked blankly away. Johnny put the syringe and precious chemical on a high shelf and started to roam through the rooms of the Research Station.