Just two of twelve automatons, doomed to die in a few more days.
That is, they would have been if Mac hadn’t left his drugstore in such a hurry the evening before.
As Mac had told Josh, when he had experimented with the white mold he had taken every precaution he could think of. Among other things, he had worn tiny, medicated pads of felt in his nostrils on the slight chance that he might inhale some of the spores.
Frequently he had replaced with new pads the ones he’d breathed through for a time. The old ones, since he had no intention of using them again, he thrust absently into the highly unsanitary depths of his coat pocket.
He hadn’t bothered to take them out when he left the store yesterday.
When he and Josh had been borne into the factory, he had crawled with apprehension at the sight of all the deadly white mold around. His hands had been bound together, but not lashed to his sides, at first. So he had inserted two of the little pads in his nostrils, by a lot of contortions of his bound limbs — and two in Josh’s. Even used, the pads would be a whole lot better than no nasal protection at all.
Veshnir had carefully introduced the glass tube into the nasal passages of both men and deposited some of the white death, not on the moist nasal membrane — but on the little felt pads. And when he turned and went out, the two men had simply snorted the pads out again.
Mac had put on an act, had fought furiously against Veshnir. Josh hadn’t bothered to. Knowledge of the pads — and of something else — had kept him calm throughout.
The dour Scot had puzzled over that curious complacence of Josh’s ever since.
“Ye look,” he said now, to the long, thin Negro, “like the cat that swallowed the canary.”
They had been released by one of the dull-eyed workers with the seeds of death in their brains, about two hours ago. They had found they must work at the two vacant tables. If they didn’t, the other ten gathered around with clubs to force them. In their dulled brains, orders had been planted concerning Mac and Josh; and they carried out the orders like mechanical things — inexorably and without question.
The two aides of The Avenger had discovered more orders, too, when they tried to slip out the door of the little death-plant. In the first place, they had found the heavy plant door was bolted from the outside. Secondly, they had seen the ten workers charge toward them once more, to club their heads in if they didn’t go back to the tables.
So they went to the tables, and they stayed at the tables. They filled glass capsules, with potential death in each for a thousand humans.
And Mac wondered audibly what made Josh so calm. They had found that they could talk all they liked. That seemed to come outside the orders left with the ten robots.
“Ye act like ye were thinkin’ of maplenut sundaes — which ye’ll probably never live to gorge on again,” said Mac, almost resentfully.
“It’s not that I’m thinking of,” said Josh, with a faint smile.
“Then in Heaven’s name, what is it? If ye know somethin’ to smile about, share it with me.”
“I am thinking,” said Josh, “that every railroad track works two ways. You can go on it, or you can come on it.”
Mac stared at Josh with sudden dreadful apprehension.
“I’m quite all right,” said Josh, still with his faint but deadly smile. “You said there was about one chance in five that your precautions wouldn’t do us any good. But apparently the chance wasn’t turned against us. We’d know by now if we were going to be like the rest in here.”
“Then,” said the Scot, exasperated, “what’s all this gibberish about railroads?”
“A railroad track runs two ways,” repeated Josh. “A conduit will allow water either to go to a certain spot, or be sucked from a certain spot.”
Mac snorted, and glared.
“Similarly, a glass tube will work both ways,” said Josh.
“If the mold hasn’t touched yer brain,” growled Mac, “then the maplenut sundaes have finally gotten ye. It still has no reason in it.”
“There is a chance,” shrugged Josh, “that one of these unfortunates in here is not so far gone but what he can understand more than he seems — and pass it on. So that is as clearly as I will put my exceedingly pleasant thought, my friend.”
So Mac simmered and stewed, wild at the realization that in his brain lay the answer to the frosted death beginning to sweep the city — and that he was held helpless here and unable to use it. And nagged also with the smaller puzzle of what the devil Josh was grinning to himself about.
In Mickelson’s apartment when the doomed man’s reason left him, Benson had phoned at once for a doctor. As a superb physician himself, he knew it was useless; but it seemed the least he could do.
Then he had taken off one of the raving man’s shoes.
His thrust about recently coming from a plane had gone home, he knew. So the problem was to find what plane, at what airport.
Mickelson’s shoe was placed on a clean sheet of paper. He scraped at the deep crease between sole and upper, and got out a tiny heap of dirt and dust.
From his pocket Benson drew something that was the only one of its kind, designed by him for just such use. It was a pocket microscope, hardly larger than a good-sized fountain pen and looking like one when it was capped. It had a tripod support that came out like three thin legs from the barrel; since no man’s hand is steady enough to hold, without blurring, an instrument with a power of eight hundred diameters.
He looked at the fine debris from Mickelson’s shoe and saw a curious blend of decomposed paper particles, microscopic bits of old rubber, and faint traces of iron oxide, all in the form of dust.
Newark Airport!
They were filling in at Newark, enlarging the already huge landing field. They were using the debris of the city as a fill. This stuff had come from there, telling that Mickelson had just come from Newark Airport. It was the most probable anyhow, since that was the largest field.
Benson admitted the doctor he had called, and left. He fitted the eye-cups with the gray-brown pupils over his own colorless, flaming orbs as he went down the stairs. When he stepped out of the building, he was Brocker again, from derby hat down to shoes with their special lifts.
It saved him from the men posted about the building.
One of them came quickly up to him, heavy face grim, eyes alert.
“Brocker! I did not know you were to be within the building. We were to watch outside—”
“The watch is over,” said Benson, in guttural tones. “There is no more need.”
“Good! We shall report—”
“It must be you that reports. I have another task. Urgent!”
He swung about with a military clicking of heels. With no more attempt at explanation — knowing, indeed, that these men did not expect to have orders explained to them — he went off.
He raced to the Newark Airport.
There, he walked slowly down the concrete run past the hangars. He went slowly — more slowly, yet, as he approached the first vast shed where private planes could rent space.
A man came out in a hurry.
“You, Brocker! What are you doing here?”
It was the tone of an executive addressing an office boy. And not a very important office boy, either.
The Avenger made his tone suitably humble.
“I have been ordered to report to you here. We go at once.”
“Go where?”
“North. To the boat.”
Benson knew his goal lay north, but he wasn’t quite as sure of his conjecture about a submarine being involved. So he used the foreign word signifying, simply: boat, or vessel.