Complete Stories (29 page)

General Moritz was a guy we’d done some ordnance development for, a few years back. A Pentagon big-wig. “All right. I’ll call him.”

“Where does he live?” Nancy wanted to know.

“Right in D.C. Georgetown.”

“Do you think the sphere has reached them yet?”

“I doubt it. What’s the difference? The telephone’ll work. It’s just electrons moving down a wire. If your husband can move through the sphere, then so can an electron.”

“The phone
won’t
work,” I insisted. “Except for local calls. Long-distance is all by microwave these days. There’s something about your expanding quark sphere that blocks electromagnetic radiation. That’s why you can’t tell if the Sun’s up yet.”

“Even if you could call Moritz, he wouldn’t believe you yet,” added Nancy. “He still has his stubbornness.”

“Not stubbornness, Nancy.
Inertia
.”

“This is more than just physics.” Her voice was light and amused. “People keep acting the same way because other people are watching them. You get trapped into acting out the role that society assigns you. It’s the same with matter. If all the stars and galaxies say, ‘Well, so and so is sitting right
there
,’ then it’s really hard to move over
here
. Peer pressure. It’s inertia. But now we’re all covered up together. Like kids hiding under a blanket. None of the big people know what we’re doing.” She put her arms around me and gave me a wet kiss. “Come on, Harry, you kiss me too.”

“I’d better not. You two just go on and enjoy yourselves. I’m going upstairs to call Max.”

Harry banged around upstairs for awhile. Then he was talking to someone, an operator. Nancy and I ignored him. We were enjoying our-selves. The only fly in the ointment was that I kept imagining that I saw people out of the corner of my eyes, glowing people like elves and fairies. That was just the alcohol abuse acting up on me. But making love with no inertia was fantastic, so …

“Ahem.”

“Are you already back, Harry? Can’t you see …”

“You were right about the phone. I think we better go see Moritz in person.”

I sat up and straightened my clothes. “What?”

“Didn’t you say you could jump real high? We’ll walk to Washington in seven-league boots!”

“What if we move too fast and land outside the sphere? If we landed from one of those jumps with all our inertia along, it’d be like falling out of an airplane. Certain death.”

“We’ll carry the inertia-winder with us. We’ll need it to show Moritz anyway.”

Well…why not. I began looking around for something to carry the spinning inertia-winder in.

“I’m coming, too,” said Nancy, standing up carefully.

“Aw, Nancy …”

“Yes, I’m coming.”

My Nancy. “Okay, honey. You come, too. Maybe we can see some sights in D.C. Be sure to bring your checkbook if we need to get the bus back. And what should I carry the inertia-winder in?”

“How about your old lunch-box that you used to use when you had an office to go to.”

“Good idea.” I found the old grey lunch-box in a corner of the basement and nudged the inertia-winder on in. It sat in the bottom of the box, spinning like a top, making a whining buzz against the metal. I hoped it wouldn’t drill its way through.

“Let me get us some sweaters,” suggested Nancy. “Even though it’s warm, we could get cold flying through the air.”

The trip got off to a good start. The three of us went out in the back yard, linked arms, and took off like superheroes. I’d never jumped harder in my life. It felt like we were going a thousand miles an hour. A limp wind whistled past us as we rose up and up and up. I held my shrilly buzzing lunch-box clutched in one hand. With the winder right with us, there was no danger of leaving the region of no inertia. We continued to rise. The whole suburban sprawl of Princeton was just a dotty smear of light, far, far below.

“Joey!” Nancy was worried. “We shouldn’t have jumped so hard! What’s going to happen when we land? And we’re still climbing!”

All at once the ground was invisible. As far as I could make out, we were passing through some clouds. A very unpleasant thought crossed my mind. What if we kept climbing indefinitely? What if the force of our combined jump had been enough to zap us up to escape velocity? As long as we stayed inside the sphere, there was virtually no wind-resistance to slow us down. Earth’s gravity was pulling at us all the time, slowly chip-ping away at our velocity, yet the turnaround point was nowhere in sight. We were going to rise and rise until we either froze to death or asphyxiated. The air streaming past me felt cold and thin as ice picks.

“Drop it, Fletch,” said Harry. His thoughts were, as usual, a step ahead of mine. “Drop the inertia-winder so we can get out of its sphere of influence and have the wind slow us down.”

I dropped my lunch-box, or tried to. At first it just hung there in front of me, buzzing like some giant horsefly. Finally I took hold of it and threw it down past my feet. The other two hung onto me as the recoil pushed us yet higher. The air was really getting cold now. With the clouds below and the black sphere’s boundary still above, it was utterly dark. Nancy began sobbing.

Just then we broke out into blinding sunlight. We were so high that the sky overhead was dark purple instead of blue. A terrifyingly immense dome of black curved down away from us, cutting the Earth’s spread-out surface in a vast circle. Out past it I could see the wrinkled surface of the sea, the huge expanse of the Chesapeake Bay. With any luck we’d be landing right in Washington.

“It’s beautiful,” gasped Nancy.

The air was so thin that we had to pant rapidly to keep from blacking out. But it was thick enough to stop our flight. Earth’s big gravity took over and we began to fall.

“Just remember how Superman lands in the movies,” I advised Nancy. “Keep your legs bent and push up as you hit.” Then the lovely sunlight was gone again.

Once we’d fallen back through the clouds we could make out the spread-out street-lights of Washington and its suburbs. The Potomac River’s black swath made a convenient landmark. Harry craned this way and that, trying to orient himself. Finally he pointed one of his stubby arms.

“That’s Georgetown over there.”

“The Pentagon would be better,” I suggested. “I’m sure General Moritz is over there by now. The Army’s going to be in a state of Red Alert wondering what happened. The whole city is without inertia. Let’s just hope they don’t start shooting missiles at the Russians.”

“They couldn’t if they wanted to,” Harry observed. “No radio-links.”

We were falling faster than ever. Here and there I could see other people flying through the air. Some of them looked very strange…not even like people, really. There was one in particular, a small man who glowed green all over. I tried to point him out to Nancy, but then he was gone. Probably just my imagination. A complex sound drifted up from the city, a generalized roar compounded of screams, sirens and horns.

“You all better decide where to land,” said Nancy. “Or we’re going to end up in the river.”

Indeed, the Potomac was directly beneath us, and getting closer all the time. “The Pentagon,” I urged, “over there to the right. We should throw something to the left to push us that way.”

“My shoes,” offered Harry. Hanging onto me with his left arm, he reached down with his right to slip off his loafers, then threw them one, two, off to our left. This was enough. We streaked down towards a strip of park at the river’s edge.

The landing was easy, but the one-mile walk to the Pentagon was a bit harder. Without inertia it’s impossible to walk normally, yet we were loath to try another big jump. Finally Nancy hit on a sort of modified bunny-hop. Harry and I hopped along after her.

The George Washington Parkway was an incredible scene. Some people were still trying to drive. Their cars jerked around like in a speeded up stop-action movie. From zero to a hundred and back to zero in three seconds. The vehicles kept crashing into each other like bumper cars, but no one was getting hurt.

The great lawn in front of the Pentagon’s main entrance was brightly lit by searchlights. A cordon of armed soldiers barred the entrance. The whole scene reminded me of the last time I’d been here: for the big outer-space peace-march.

“HALT,” shouted a bull-horn.

“Look out, Joey,” said Nancy. “They’ve got guns pointed at us.”

“Think Superman, baby. With no inertia those bullets’ll just bounce off us.”

“HUMANS,” hollered Harry. “WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU. TAKE US TO YOUR LEADERS.” He’d never sounded more like a Martian.

We bunny-hopped closer. There was another warning, and then the soldiers opened fire. Just as I predicted, it was no worse than being barraged by pea-shooters. You just had to be careful that you didn’t get hit in the eye. We hopped closer.

Harry kept us his alien invader routine. “DO NOT ANGER US, EARTHLINGS. WE COME IN PEACE.” At that, some fanatic lobbed a mortar shell down in front of us. The shrapnel bounced off us all right, but the force of the shock-wave was enough to send us tumbling head over heels. Luckily, we were able to hang onto each other. We finally came to a stop against a big deuce-and-a-half troop truck parked off to one side.

“What’s with the
Day the Earth Stood Still
routine?” I asked Harry as soon as I could get my breath. “Why do you act like a spaceman?”

“I thought that way it would be easier to get in.”

“We’re lucky we weren’t killed,” exclaimed Nancy. “If we’d gotten closer, they could have bayoneted us, you realize that?”

“No more Mister Nice Guy,” I said. “Let’s plow this stinking truck into them. We’ve got to get Moritz to find that inertia-winder and put it on a rocket.”

I toyed with the idea of picking the truck up and throwing it, but this was unfortunately out of the question. The truck’s gravitational mass was as big as ever. The most I could hope for would be to push it over on its side.

“The keys are in here,” called Nancy from the cab. “Come on, boys.”

Bombs and tracer bullets flared around us as we barreled into the Pentagon steps. At the last minute we jumped clear and bounced to a rest against the building’s wall. The soldiers were so distracted that we were able to climb through a window.

We found ourselves in a long, brightly-lit corridor. People in uniforms hurried this way and that, bouncing off the walls and ceilings. Harry steered us right into one of the offices. A whey-faced old man in a captain’s uniform looked up from his empty desk. He seemed a bit drunk.

“Can we use your phone?” asked Harry. “We have to get in touch with General Max Moritz.”

“Good luck,” said the man, smiling wryly. “All the great high muck-a-mucks are downstairs hiding in the Situation Room. How did you three get in here anyway?”

“We’re CIA operatives,” I said casually. “We’ve got some information on the attack.”

Narrowing his muddy eyes, he sized us up. Cute Nancy, weird Harold, and Joe Fletcher the tech-freak. “You’re lying,” he concluded, and pulled something out of his drawer. A bottle. “Have a drink.
Die high
, as we used to say in ‘Nam.”

“Well all right.” I took the fifth of bourbon and blasted a hit.

“
Joseph
.”

“I’m sorry, Nancy, I forgot myself.” I passed the bottle to Harry, who greedily sucked it for what seemed like a very long time. The man be-hind the desk watched with displeasure. The name-tag on his chest read: Captain Snerman.

“It’s really true,” wheezed Harry, returning what remained of the bourbon. “We’re not in the CIA, but we do have some information about the inertia-winder. I built it. I made all this happen.”

“Sure you did,” said Snerman, cradling his depleted fifth. “You and the two hundred other people who’ve already called in. What’d you use, pyramid power? Antigravity? Spirit familiars?”

There was a crash as one of the people hurrying down the corridor bounced against our door. “Not anti
gravity
,” said Harry, “anti-
inertia
. I promise you, my good man, Max Moritz knows us very well. Just tell him that Harry Gerber and Joe Fletcher are here to consult with him on the current situation. Time is of the essence.”

“What the hell,” Snerman took a drink and dialed a number. “Snerman here. We’ve got what might be a lead. Two men and a woman. Harry Gerber, Joseph Fletcher, and …” He glanced up at Nancy.

“Nancy Lydon.” Of course she’d refused to change her name when we got married.

“Nancy Lydon,” continued Snerman. “Gerber and Fletcher insist that they are scientists, that they know General Moritz, and that they have caused the present crises.” The receiver chattered briefly, and then Snerman set it down.

“Make yourselves comfortable.” he said, gesturing at some grey metal chairs. He held onto his desk to keep the gesture from knocking him over. “It’ll take your message a while to percolate up the chain of command. Where is this machine of yours anyway, Mr. Gerber?”

“It’s in my lunch-box,” I volunteered, “But …” Harry nudged me sharply and I fell silent.

“This is for General Moritz’s ears only,” said Harry. “The fate of the Earth is at stake.”

Snerman shrugged, fell out of his chair, got back in his chair and took another drink. I wondered what time it was. Maybe ten in the morning. According to Harry’s calculations we had about twenty hours till the moon fell down. Of course some other disaster might take place first.

It seemed possible, for instance, that the changing balance of gravity and inertia could lead to severe earthquakes. What if Earth broke right in half? Of if the air escaped? Or …

Just then my stomach took a nose dive. There was some…person-age standing behind Snerman. It was a man made of greenish flames, a man with a goblin’s pointed face …

There was a sharp knock on the door. Two big marines with bayonets. Our escort. Moritz wanted to see us. The glowing man had disappeared with the knock. I’d probably just imagined him. You know how it is when you’re over-tired; sometimes you think you see things moving, just quick glimpses out of the corner of your eye.

There were more people in the halls than before. They were still falling down a lot, but they kept moving anyway. The best technique for indoors seemed to be a rapid shuffling motion like that of a cross-country skier. The elevators were not to be trusted, so we took the stairs. It was ten levels and three checkpoints to the Situation Room. The marines shoved us in and closed the door after us.