Bombs that weighed four or five pounds. No way to detect them. They could be smuggled into any country. While you were at peace, you hid two or three of these litde bombs in each of the main cities of your potential enemies. Then, in case you had to go to war, the first thing you did was to set off the bombs. Your enemy didn't have any cities any more. While he was trying to discover what had happened to him, you moved in with your armies. A few years later, when you thought everything was under control, the underground blew up your cities.

  Abrupdy the human race stopped living in cities. You never could tell when a city was going to blow up. You had better live out in the country, in little towns.

  "If we could smuggle these bombs into the Halvar ships—" the youth from the Department of Investigation said hesitant-

  ly.

  "In time, in good time," Dora said. "But that means war— Unless we blew up all the Halvar ships at once, they would fight back. And remember, in the almost 600 years of peace, we have built cities again. If we left one Halvar ship in the air, it would destroy our cities. All of this—" He was thinking out loud. "All of these displays of atomic energy belong to the last world war. Our forefathers used these weapons. We can use them, in time. But they're not the weapon we're looking for, the weapon that stopped fighting forever—"

  "There's one more panel," Young said.

  The last panel, the last weapon. Clay Dorn looked at it.

  Logically the most hideous of all war instruments should be here in this panel, a perfect engine of destruction, a squat black monstrosity, bulging with barrels, a weapon to hurl death beyond the horizon.

  No such weapon was on display. The panel contained two objects: a bright metallic headband and a placard.

  "There must be some mistake," Dorn heard someone say. "That headband isn't a weapon, can't be a weapon—"

  Dorn scarcely heard the words. He had almost stopped breathing. He was reading the placard

  The first model of the tele-path, called the "Phobitron" by George Jansen, its inventor, because its accentuated and exploited the phobias or fears of the person against whom its radiations were directed. Used as a weapon, it is reputed to be the device that brought about the end-Clay Dorn's heart was up in his mouth and he was shouting at the top of his voice. "The phobitron! The fear hurler. Gentlemen, we've got it!"

  The six men stared at him. He explained what he meant. The attendants of the Museum of Peace found themselves roughly handled that night when they tried to close up. Seven men said the museum was not going to be closed. When the attendants protested, they found themselves subjected to the indignity of being bound, gagged, and locked up behind one of their own wall panels.

  The seven men of the Underground worked like fools all night long.

  CHAPTER V

  THE HALVAR commander and his captains waited in the main cabin of the battle wagon that served as a flagship. Radioed information from his destroyer that had waited at World City advised him that seven men, bearing the reply of the earth government to his ultimatum, were on their way to him.

  Helmeted, adorned with medals, each wearing holstered weapons, the commander and his captains waited. Around the huge cabin, set in alcoves, gun crews stood at their weapons. A communications officer with his aids was seated before a radio panel, ready to flash the signal "Commence action" to the rest of the task force, if such a signal was needed. The Halvar knew it wouldn't be needed. There was no sign of resistance from the planet below. The Halvar did not expect resistance. They had the ships, the weapons, the trained fighters, all blue chips in the game of war. The planet below them had nothing.

  The sounding of a gong announced the arrival of the men carrying earth's reply to the ultimatum. Escorted by guards, seven men entered the huge cabin. One of them carried the telepath necessary for communication between the two races. He set it on the small table that was waiting for it. Two men stepped forward to face the Halvar commander. Oddly, they did not walk as should members of a subject race approaching their masters. They did not bow. They didn't even salute. Chins up, shoulders thrown back, they walked like proud men, defiant men.

  The Halvar sensed their defiance. Dangerous glints appeared in the eyes of the commander. There was little patience in the Halvar makeup, none at all for defiant inferiors. The Halvar had walked softly when they first arrived on this planet, watching warily for possible traps, probing its defenses. They had learned it was defenseless and the time was over for softness.

  "You bear the reply to the ultimatum from your governing body?" the Halvar commander asked.

  "Yes," Clay Dom answered. "We bring a reply." He did not add that neither President Whitcomb nor any member of his cabinet knew they were here, that they had stolen uniforms and forged papers of identification before presenting themselves. There had been no time to ask permission, to make long and involved explanations.

  "That is good. What does your governing body say?"

  "Earth declares for peace," Dom answered. He did not say what kind of peace.

  "Peace?" Satisfaction appeared on the face of the Halvar commander. "That is good. The metals, food, the living space, and the workers will be turned over to us as we require them?"

  Dom took a deep breath. He slipped a hand into the pocket of his tunic, found the switch of a little instrument nestled there.

  "Such metals as we have in surplus, or can produce with your assistance, you may have. Food? All you want. Here no one goes hungry. Living space will be provided in our deserts which can, with enough hard work, be made productive. These things we will permit. About the workers—"

  "Permit?" the Halvar commander interrupted icily. "You will permit us to have these things?"

  His eyes, fastened on the two men facing him, were suddenly hot with anger. Dom knew that the time had come. He glanced around, at the six men with him, then looked again at the commander.

  "You space pirates can go straight to hell!" he said.

  Unquestionably the Halvar commander did not know the meaning of the phrase "go to hell." He did know the meaning of defiance. He could recognize defiance when he saw it. He saw it now. He leaped from his chair.

  "Blast these insolent dogs to dust!" he shouted. "Guns crews: Commence action. Communications officer: Order all ships to commence firing at once and to continue until otherwise directed. Move."

  Dorn grinned at the men with him. "Let her go, boys," he said. "Show them what can be done with a phobitron!"

  Emergency gongs sounded as the commander's order roared through the big cabin. Instantly vast engines began to rumble as the waiting engineers cut in full power. The communications officer snapped switches on the panel in front of him, prepared to relay orders to the other Halvar ships. A lieutenant pulled a gun from its holster to blast the seven from earth.

  Dorn knew exacdy what he had to do. Each of the seven knew exactly what to do. They had spent the whole night learning how, in feverishly building extra models of the strange instrument called the phobitron. Dorn concentrated his attention on the lieutenant who was pulling the gun.

  The lieutenant had the gun out. He was moving to get into a position where the discharge would not endanger his own comrades. He found the position he wanted, brought the gun up, started to glance down the line of the sights.

  His eyes stopped at the weapon itself. His gaze became fixed on the gun, concentrated there with terrible intensity.

  The gun seemed to hold a horrible fascination for him. A sick loathing overspread his face. The lieutenant first looked horrified, then he looked sick. Something was happening to him. He didn't know what it was. All he knew was that he was suddenly terribly afraid of his own gun.

  Ever since he had learned to use a gun, he had been a little afraid of it, afraid of what it might do, afraid it might explode in his hands. Terrible forces were leashed within that cunningly contrived piece of metal and plastic. The lieutenant knew what the forces would do to him if they were suddenly released. Instandy his fear of the gun overwhelmed him.

  Like a man who has suddenly discovered he has a piece of red-hot metal in his hands, he threw the gun from his hands. The crash as it hit the floor was a tinkle of sound in what had become a roaring tumult.

  Gun crews, in the turrets in the wall, had tried to swing their weapons into action. Like the lieutenant, the gun crews knew the terrible forces leashed within the guns. Suddenly the fear of those forces became a madness in their minds. They shrank away from their weapons, cowered away from them.

  Fear walked through the ship, walked with silent but terribly swift feet through the Halvar battleship.

  The communications officer was not afraid of the radio transmitter. Not consciously. He knew the danger of the currents that flowed there, but the currents were shielded and would not touch or harm him. Suddenly he had the impression the wires were no longer properly insulated. The currents were about to touch him. He stared at the radio transmitter as if it was some horrible monster that had suddenly appeared before him. His face went white with fear. He jerked himself away from the equipment.

  The message he had been ordered to send was never sent.

  "Where do we go from here?" Young asked.

  Dorn had the answer to that too. "There is no greater fear than the fear of falling. Every creature that flies is afraid it will fall."

  "I get it," Young said grimly. "Well work on that commander."

  The Halvar commander was staring at his men. He was all-powerful here, his word was law, unless his men should mutiny against him. He was suddenly aware of the fear that his men would mutiny. The fear held him. A second later an even greater fear came flooding into his mind. The fear had always been there. Now it suddenly grew stronger, became overwhelming in its horror.

  What if the ship fell? Inconceivable energies would be released if the ship fell. Everyone in it would be blown into particles finer than dust.

  The fear that the ship might fall was a monstrous thing, a hideous exploding torrent of emotion roaring through his mind.

  "Land the ship!" the commander screamed. "Descendl We might fall!"

  "Order all ships to descend," Clay Dorn said grimly. "They might fall too."

  The commander's face was lined with pain. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the realization of the meaning of this order. If the ships were ordered to land—He fought against it.

  The fear in his mind grew deeper, blacker. He tore the helmet from his head, his finger nails ripped long red grooves in his scalp as he fought against the horror raging in his brain. He tore his tunic off, fought for air with great gasping sobs. As he fought new fears crowded in around him. He was not only afraid the ship would fall, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to breathe. He was afraid of this and that and everything.

  "All—ships—down—" he croaked. His face was not a pretty sight as he crumpled to the floor.

  The communications officer found himself able to approach his equipment long enough to obey that order.

  The flagship led the way down. The other Halvar vessels followed in regular order. Like slowly falling leaves the ships went down to earth. When the official party bearing the capitulation from the World State reached the landing field to take off to the Halvar commander's flagship, they found it had already landed and was waiting for them.

  "All the phobitron does is accentuate your own normal fears," Clay Dorn said, to the grinning news and telecast men. "Everybody is afraid of something. Most of us are afraid of a lot of things. The phobitron increases those fears one to ten thousand times. The person who wears the phobitron directs the radiation against his enemy and the enemy is afraid to attack, afraid to do anything, afraid almost to stay alive. It's the most damnable, horrible, powerful weapon that was ever invented—the turning of a man's own fears a-gainst himself. This is the reason it, and the telepath, were outlawed on earth."

  "So that's why the Halvar landed?" a reporter asked.

  "Yes. If they didn't land, they might fall. They were afraid of falling. We worked on that. Now—"

  He was thinking about the Halvar. What could be done with them. The Halvar unquestionably had much to give the human race. The space drive, the secret of these mighty ships. They would give their secrets now, they would be afraid not to give them. The human race would have ships to reach the stars.

  "With their ships and our phobitron, we can sail anywhere in the universe," Clay Dorn said grinning. He looked at the six men with him. "Somehow I think we'll be members of the first star ship that takes off from this planet. What do you think, my friends?"

  Their grins told him what they thought. Ships and the weapons and the men to sail beyond the farthest star the clearest night reveals—these the race had.

  THE STUBBORN MEN

  THE SOUND was like small glass bells ringing, a thin clear chiming that pulsed with a deep, compelling rhythm, elfin music from fairyland. Contrasting with this dainty chiming, the radiation counter on the wall suddenly began to bark like some ugly but faithful watchdog smelling danger in the night. Jack Danby came to his feet and looked at me, the healthy brown of his face fleeing under a creeping tide of white.

  Then he seemed to grasp what was happening. "He lied to me!" he burst out. "This proves it. Gave the staff the night off. Had me ask you down to keep me busy and out of the way. What a man!"

  Clean and clear and dainty, the elfin music pulsed with a deep vitality. High notes, clear notes, like the sky is high and clear on October nights. On the wall the watchdog hooted now in crazy fear.

  Jack Danby went out of the barracks building on the run, heading for the squat structure with the three-foot thick concrete walls, the radiation laboratory. The strange music was coming from the lab and I wondered, as I followed Jack, how the sounds—if they were sounds—were getting through those concrete walls.

  The door was lead-lined steel. Jack grabbed the latch. The door was locked. He jerked at it.

  "Jim!" he screamed. "Open this door."

  The elfin notes, as if in answer, swept up in a ringing flood. The laboratory seemed to vibrate with the sound. It appeared to come from the earth below us, from the stars overhead, from the depths of space between those stars. In the fractional part of a second, it seemed to sweep through the whole of space like hghtning flashing from a far-off star, then died as the hghtning dies, so swiftly you can hardly realize it has come and gone.

  Jack seemed to hold his breath. Inside the door, a lock

  clicked softly, and the steel barrier swung open. But no one looked out at us.

  "Dead man's control," Jack Danby whispered. "No, Steve, don't follow me." He went in and I followed him.

  Jim Anderson was slumped down in front of the control panel. As he fell, his foot had slipped from the floor switch. That had actuated the circuit that shoved in the baffle plates, stopped the pile, and opened the door.

  It was the first time I had seen a man who had just died. There was pain on Jim Anderson's face, and peace too, as if at the last moment he had learned a secret that made the pain unimportant.

  Jack swore luridly. "We were scheduled to run this test Monday."

  "And you would have been here Monday, in the lab?" I asked.

  "Of course." The tone of his voice said this was a silly question. "The whole staff would have been here."

  I didn't ask what had killed Jim Anderson because I knew. A sudden and unexpected flood of radiation. Not gamma, though that is deadly enough, but some other unknown kind that exploded in singing music, and killed instantly. This was an atomic research laboratory. Here stubborn men worked with the atom, trying to learn more of its secrets than Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Bikini have revealed.

  Looking at the man on the floor, Jack choked, and swallowed. I knew the depth of the respect and affection he had held for Jim Anderson. He turned it out of his mind.

  "Something here we don't know about," he said. "Some new particle, some new radiation. Have to check."

  "Jack!" My voice must have been raw along his nerves.

  He put his arm around my shoulder. "Steve, will you call Dr. Carson? He'll want to check this too. Here, I'll go with you."

  Because the bulked equipment might still be "hot"—might be emitting lethal quantities of invisible radiation—he shooed me out, brothering me to safety. That's what he was—my brother. Hours later, when I got a chance to talk to him alone, I reminded him of it.

  "Danby, you don't have to be the one who runs that check!"

  "You don't understand," he answered. "Research, Incorporated has poured millions of dollars into our work." .

  "Research has all the money it needs. If it wants more, all it has to do is ask somebody, anybody. I am not aware that the Danbys have any more lives than the Andersons."

  He sighed. "We need to know, Steve." He gestured toward the northern sky. "When it comes we got to know."

  He was talking about an atom bomb.

  "But you don't have to run that check. Let somebody else do it."

  "I'm chief now, Steve," he said. Then he grinned. "Don't worry so much about it. When I'm in the lab, I know I'm working with something a lot more dangerous than a thousand rattlesnakes. You can be certain I'll be careful."

  "Then," I said. "You won't mind if I'm here."

  His eyes went into wary alertness, "There's no need, Steve. But—" His shrug was elaborate. "Ill write or call you and have you come down for it."

  "And if you should forget to write or call?"

  "Me?" He laughed. "I won't forget."

  "Promise?"

  Irritation crept into his voice. "Okay, it's a promise."

  With his promise, I agreed to go back to school. I was in college, finishing a master's degree.

  A week later, he wrote me, saying that a physicist named Hughes had been promoted to his old job of assistant, that it would be several months before they were ready to run another test, and that he was having trouble replacing staff men who had resigned.

 

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