Part 1

STOPWATCH on the WORLD

By Daniel R. Gilgannon

Feature Novel of Deadly Menace

Every member of the UN received the note which said: "... Give us peace within a month or I shall destroy the earth utterly." And only two men believed the sender to be capable of carrying out his threat--two men, bucking red-tape, trying to find the terribly sincere atomic physicist, Chetzisky, before the deadline!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

_EXTRACTS, HOSPITAL CASE HISTORY No. 3007:_

_Patient admitted 11:45 A.M. in coma and severe shock. Pulse weak. Temperature 95. White cell count less than 2,000. Blood draining off into tissues, indicating generalized purpura. Immediate whole blood transfusions given._

_DIAGNOSIS: Radiation illness. Exposure considered lethal. Probably about 1,000 roentgens._

_2:30 P.M. White cell count now down to 500. Response to aureomycin treatment favorable.... 3:10 P.M. Hematocrit reading remains high at 101.... 3:55 P.M. Lab reports show karyorrhexis developing swiftly as more and more cells are ionized by 'hot' isotopes in patient's body.... 4:40 P.M. Geiger counter set up at bedside to check progressive radioactivity of the human atomic pile.... 5:10 P.M. Guided by hematocrit readings, blood transfusions increased, supplemented by albumen.... 5:50 P.M. Patient conscious. Suffers violent spasms of pain. Morphine barely suffices. He appears thoughtful, moves head weakly...._

With a great effort I turn my head and see the sun going down behind the color-splashed ridges of the Coastal range. It's the last sunset I shall ever see and the end of a day that a mad-man with an atomic stopwatch meant to be your last.

Every cell inside me seems a glowing coal. The geiger counter clicks off a slow, steady staccato. Suddenly I find my body arching itself convulsively in a wracking outbreak of pain. There is the quick sharpness of a needle in my arm and mercifully I am numb.

Armstrong, his giant frame hunched over in the chair, watches me with a suffering look new to those hard, cold eyes of his. A good man and a loyal friend. If he weren't as stubborn and resolute as a bull-dog, you might not be sitting down to your supper tonight.

My mind is strangely clear and calm, as if washed by cool, clean winds from distant space. I remember everything vividly, the whole sequence of events that began a month ago.

I was chatting, I recall, with some students about the transuranic elements after my lecture on "The Chain Reaction of Uranium" when a lab instructor tapped me on the shoulder.

"There's an army colonel waiting upstairs in your office, Doctor Bailey."

I was frowning when I left. A reserve officer who served in Military Intelligence on the Manhattan Project, I sensed something ominous in the visit. The Korean situation already had me in an uneasy mood.

My spirits picked up, however, when I entered the office and recognized the tall dignified figure, with grizzled hair, standing by the window.

"Jim Armstrong, you old blood-hound."

"Hello, Arnold," and my hand was lost in his big fist.

Armstrong is a powerfully built man. He played a bone-crushing left end in his college days. You used to need a convoy of light tanks to make a sweep around him. I know; I played against him when I was a blocking back on the Princeton varsity. A former F.B.I. agent, he had one of the toughest and finest minds in Intelligence. Once he picked up a trail, he followed it doggedly. Like the time during the war when he went after government-contract profiteers. Despite faked invoices, bribed witnesses, and strong pressure from higher-ups, he tracked his men down and landed them in jail.

"Now, Jim, what's on your mind?" I said after we were both comfortably seated.

He put his hand in his tunic and brought out a letter which he handed me.

"I want you to read that, Arnold. Yesterday every member of the United Nations received a similar note. No one takes it seriously, regarding it as the work of a peace crank. I'd like to hear what you think about it."

I put on my glasses and opened the letter.

_Dear Sirs:_

_You are herewith given notice to bring peace and freedom to all peoples within thirty days from this date. We are sick of your broken pledges, your compromises with principle, your verbal shilly-shallying. Give us peace within a month or I shall destroy the earth utterly._

_Chetzisky._

* * * * *

I recognized the name immediately. "Chetzisky." A brilliant Polish physicist, a refugee who fled the twin tyrannies of Germany and Russia. Unknown to all but a few, he had played an important role in the Manhattan Project. His opinions and work had won the respect of the Comptons, the Oppenheimers, the Seaborgs; even, it's said, of Einstein himself.

His small face, with oddly shining eyes set close together, came vividly to mind. The last time I saw him was in March, 1946, en route to St. Louis for the convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I met him on the train out of Chicago. His conversation was bitter with denunciations of the world's fumblings toward peace.

"We scientists," Chetzisky had said, "give man the means to aid the suffering, to conserve the strength of the toiler, to bring more comfort and leisure to all. But does man appreciate our work? No! He uses our every work to steal from his brother, to cheat, enslave, even to kill him."

His eyes became glinting points as he spoke. His guttural tones grew indistinct as emotion choked him. He was a scientist of a rare order. Yet he was a humanist, too; the suffering he knew as a young Pole, son of tragically poor parents, made him that way. Chetzisky was savagely impatient of the stupidity of man, who built himself a hell instead of a paradise. Science, he felt, could find a way to put mankind on its best behaviour.

"I see your point, Doctor," I had said. "But science has given the world a dose of the atom bomb and it hasn't started behaving."

"Yes, I know. But there must be a way. An enforced goodness is better than none at all." He had fallen into a brooding silence, and I had left him to go to my berth. Next morning I had found Chetzisky still in the lounge car, wrapped in thought.

* * * * *

"Well, Arnold, what do you think?" asked Armstrong, breaking in on my recollections.

"Frankly, Jim, I believe he could do it; he's that kind of man."

"That makes two of us," said Armstrong, his fingers thrumming on the side of his chair. And after a while, "Only two of us."

"You mean to say the government isn't going to make even a routine check?"

"That's right, Arnold. The Korean affair has sidetracked everything else. Of course, they may be right; it may only be a hoax. But I have a hunch it isn't. That's why I came to you."

"I have never known you to have a wrong hunch yet, Jim. I'll go along with you."

"Thanks, Arnold." Armstrong lit up a cigarette and after the first long puff went on, "Have you any idea how Chetzisky could do it? You're a scientist; you should know."

"Well, Jim, it's a fantastic possibility and it calls for some fantastic conjectures. Perhaps he's found a way to produce a chain reaction right down into the earth's core; perhaps he can produce a radioactive cloud of colossal proportions. Then again he may have a way of activating uranium, thorium, and radium deposits all over the world by ultra-high frequency radiations."

"You don't think," said Armstrong, "that there might be atomic bombs cached in strategic places throughout the world, ready to be set off on a certain day by time mechanisms or confederates?"

"Hardly. That would call for such widespread activity and the work of so many hands it couldn't escape detection. Besides, to achieve the annihilation Chetzisky promises would take thousands of bombs. Such production is beyond us as a nation, never mind an individual."

Armstrong got up and walked restlessly about the room. "Arnold, I was only worried when I came here; now I'm terrified."

"What do you plan doing, Jim?"

"We've got to catch up with him fast. We can't take the chance it's a hoax." The square jaw hardened and the muscles tightened in the lean, weather-beaten face. "Will you help me, Arnold?"

"Of course. I can easily get a leave of absence for government business and...."

"You won't be able," Armstrong broke in, "because it isn't government business. Remember there are only two of us who believe this note. Whatever help we'll need I'll have to wrangle by pulling my rank." He pointed to the colonel's eagles on his shoulders.

"But I have six more lectures to deliver this semester, Jim; that will tie me up for three weeks."

"That can't be helped. When is your next class?"

"Tuesday. My lectures are Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"Good. That gives you lots of time to work with me between lectures. Beginning right now."

"But--"

"Start packing some things. I'll arrange for you to fly to the atomic labs and take up Chetzisky's trail from there. You'll have the entire weekend to dig up something." He took me by the arm and hustled me out of the office.

While I rummaged in my rooms for a luggage case and packed some clothes, the energetic Armstrong sat on my bed smoking a cigarette and filled me in on the details he had rounded up in the past twenty-four hours. The man was a wonder the way he had gone to work unofficially on the Chetzisky case while still handling a regular official assignment on the leakage of troop movements.

"Doctor Chetzisky got a year's leave of absence from the atomic labs; that was eight months ago. A month ago he dropped out of sight altogether."

"Did he tell anyone where he was going?"

"No, he didn't. But he did have an interesting chat with a visiting English chemist, Doctor Chaslington, the Nobel prize winner. Told Chaslington that our fission methods are as out of date and wasteful as the first automobile. Chaslington didn't press him for further information. Matter of good taste and manners with the Englishman. Besides, he probably figured Chetzisky was simply projecting his fancy into the future."

I grunted as I snapped the suitcase lock shut. "By the way, Jim, have you traced any of the letters yet?"

"No." Armstrong paused to light a fresh cigarette. "That's what I'll be doing while you're away. Ready?" He dropped the burnt-out match in an ash tray and swung my bag off the bed.

* * * * *

Five hours later I was air-bound out of Washington for the atomic labs. As the lights of cities and towns flashed below me, a panicking sense of responsibility seized me. Two of us alone were trying to save two billion people from a deadline of annihilation; forced to do it in our spare time as if the rescue of a planet was a casual hobby for leisure hours. I struck an angry fist into the palm of my hand; a sickening feeling of hopelessness took me by the pit of the stomach.

My glance fell on the newspaper open on my lap. A lovely debutante stared up at me, smiling. "_Wedding Set For Next Month_," the caption under the picture announced. _If there is a next month_, I thought. Millions like the debutante were thinking of some bliss next month would bring--the young mother-to-be; the old couple approaching a golden anniversary celebration; the prisoner awaiting release; the author looking forward to his first published book. If Armstrong and I failed--I shook off the thought of it and turned to the sport page. The print grew dim behind a procession of images of happy brides, bright-eyed old couples, beaming, confident young men, and I fell off into an uneasy sleep.

At the airport the Director of the Atomic labs was on hand to meet me and take me to his home for breakfast. I ate hurriedly and waited with evident impatience until my host drove me over to the atomic labs. He showed me into Chetzisky's office and the hunt had begun.

The office was a small neat room at the end of a corridor. I inspected every nook and cranny of the place. I took out the desk drawers, looked for stray papers, leafed through the scientific volumes in the bookcase. I checked the wall calendar for notations or circled dates. I searched everywhere and found nothing.

From the office the Director drove me over to the "prefab" residential section where Doctor Chetzisky's assistant, Roger Budnick, lived. He was just sitting down to a last minute coffee when we came in. The Director introduced us and left. I joined Budnick in a coffee and questioned him about the Doctor. He answered frankly but he had no information.

Disgusted and discouraged I accepted Budnick's offer to ride with him to the labs. His 1938 Chevrolet was parked in front of the house. I noticed the badly dented fender as I walked around to get in the car, and commented on it.

"I got it the same night Doctor Chetzisky had his accident at the lab."

I froze in the act of sliding into the seat beside him. "What accident?"

"Oh, the doctor was doing some work alone one night. Something went wrong and he telephoned for me to come over right away. When I got there everything was all right. He apologized for disturbing me."

"Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"

"No, I don't think so. Except the Geiger; it gave a count a little above normal."

Somewhere here was a lead. I felt it, but I couldn't seem to get my hands on it. "Did he have any visitors about that time?"

Budnick lowered his head, studying the gravelled road in a concentrated attempt at remembering.

He shook his head slowly. Then his memory stirred. "Yes, I remember. A day or so before the accident he had a visitor. Some geologist, I believe; that reminds me, too: that night in the lab the Doctor had one of those boxes mineral samples are kept in. It was very heavy, as if it was solid lead."

Excited now, I shot my questions in rapid fire.

"Do you know the geologist's name?... Would you remember it if you heard it again?... Good.... Can you get the day off?... Then go back home and start remembering that man's name for all your life's worth. Get a telephone directory. Go through it. Try anything but recall that name."

2

I left Budnick a little dazed by my emphatic manner and whipped over to the headquarters of the atomic labs. There I checked on back visitor's lists but evidently the Doctor's geologist friend hadn't visited him on the job. I dropped in at the telegraph office and wired Armstrong in Washington for a list of Chetzisky's acquaintances, the names of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the Geological Society, the OSRD.

Then I went back to Budnick and began a mental third degree, using a rhyming dictionary, a genealogical compendium and the collection lists from an old church bulletin. Hour after hour I kept it up. Others had seen the Doctor's visitor, but only Budnick knew the name. It was the only clue I had to go on.

After eight solid hours, broken only by coffee and sandwich snacks, Budnick was begging me to call off the grilling. "Give me a break. Let me get a little sleep." He clutched his head as if he were trying to keep it from flying apart. His eyes were swollen and red.

"All right," I said; Budnick was at his limit. Besides, I had to wait for Armstrong's reply to my telegram.

Budnick rolled to the floor and went to sleep on the spot. I sank down in an armchair, tired, but too tense to sleep, and waited.

Three hours later Armstrong's reply came. I ripped the yellow envelope open.

CANNOT GET INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED BECAUSE OF NEW SECURITY REGULATIONS.

Armstrong.

I slumped back into the chair, swearing silently at every bureaucrat in Washington. Served them right if we let Chetzisky fry them. But it meant being fried ourselves; I looked over to the snoring Budnick and decided on a trick I had seen Army interrogators work during the war.

"Come on, Budnick," I said shaking him. I called to his wife to bring some fresh coffee. After he had gulped down two steaming cups, I opened up on him again.

"Abeles, Aberon" ... For two hours I shot names at him from a telephone directory without let-up. My voice turned hoarse. Budnick's eyes went sick and he began to turn green, the color of corroded copper.

This was the moment.

I stopped my staccato fire and walked over to the window. Silence settled in the room like a velvet hush. It was soothing, like cool cloth on a fevered forehead.

I went over to Budnick, offered him a cigarette, and lit it for him. He took a long, contented puff. Casually I placed an ash tray at his elbow.

"Thanks," he said.

Then, taking a grip on my banjo nerves, I spoke as quietly as I could, "What did you say his name was?"

"Pilon."

The name sprang from his lips before he realized it. He stared at me dumbfounded, then he was on his feet, yelling like a man suddenly freed from a nightmare. "That's it. Pilon. Pilon. Why didn't I think of it before?"

I said amen to that. Exhaustion took hold of me. I just wanted to sleep. But first I had to wire Armstrong to find out all he could about a geologist named Pilon, first name unknown. Then, without bothering to crawl between the clean sheets, I fell on the bed in the Budnicks' spare room and sank into a black void that kept receding into a deeper and blacker void.

_EXTRACTS, HOSPITAL CASE HISTORY NO. 3007:_

_6:05 P.M. Patient rapidly weakening. White cell count now barely 100. Pulse very feeble. Transfusions now given continuously. Emergency call to Vancouver to fly in fresh supply.... 6:10 P.M. Pain more intense. Morphine given at increasingly frequent intervals. Patient still appears rational._

The days following the visit to the atomic labs and the Budnicks were, I remember, tedious, floor-pacing days.

Back home at the University I mechanically prepared my lecture notes and waited tensely for word from Armstrong. Tuesday came without news. I gave my lecture, stumbling stupidly several times, so great had the strain on me become. I could stand it no longer and immediately after class I phoned Armstrong in Washington.

He sounded high-strung himself. Unable to get official cooperation he was being forced to dig up the information on Pilon by devious methods. "We have to get official support, Arnold," he snapped angrily. "Otherwise, some of these Washington worshippers of red-tape, clerks parroting, 'That's another department, sir,' and 'put it through channels' sticklers are going to kill any chance of our tracking down Chetzisky."

"And kill two billion people," I added with wry humor.

When I hung up, I had my mind made up. I was going to look up an old Princeton schoolmate, Nevil Oxford, now a famous newscaster for the Federal Broadcasting Company.

* * * * *

Nevil was sipping coffee from a paper cup as he bent over the news bulletins on the clattering teletypes when I entered his office in the F.B.C. Building. After a preliminary exchange of the usual alumni gossip I got down to cases and told him about Chetzisky.

"And you really believe he could do it, Arnold?"

"I do. Most certainly."

Nevil's face hadn't much color in it now. "Come on," he said, "Let's go downstairs; I need a drink."

Over scotch and sodas I hammered away at him, trying to get him to break the Chetzisky story on his eleven o'clock broadcast.

"I can't, Arnold. We've been asked to lay off the sensational stuff. Besides, it would start a panic. Remember what happened a month ago when some jaded announcer pulled the gag about the Russians being in the outskirts of the city."

"But, Nev, it isn't a case of Orson Welles tom-foolery; it's a life and death necessity of stirring the government to action through public opinion."

"I can't." He turned to the bartender and ordered a double scotch. No soda this time. "It isn't that I don't believe you, Arnold. It's--ah, hell."

He threw down his drink quickly. For a moment he stood twirling the empty glass in his hand, staring at the lone amber drop rolling in arcs at the bottom. "You know, Arnold, I'm scared. Scared stiff," he said suddenly, turning to me. He looked at his wrist-watch. "I'm on in half an hour; maybe I _will_ tell them."

I watched him walk unsteadily out of the bar, his shoulders set squarely in an attitude of defiance. I toyed with a drink for twenty minutes, then went upstairs to the studio reception room to listen in on Nevil's broadcast. Twice during it he paused significantly as though he was going to break the Chetzisky story, but each time he must have lost his nerve. Or the effects of the scotch had worn off too quickly. Disappointed, I left without bothering to say goodbye to him.

Thursday I phoned Armstrong again. He had no word on Pilon. He had succeeded, however, in tracking down the man who sent out Chetzisky's letters. The man was a retired school-teacher, an old friend of the physicist, to whom Chetzisky had given a number of letters and telegrams to be sent out according to a prescribed schedule. That was as far as the school-teacher's participation went.

The next few days I acted like a caged lion, my eyes cocked fearfully on the calendar, waiting for something to happen. My nights were sleepless. It was nerve-wracking to stand by and watch time run out on the world. And on myself. At first, my stomach simply turned without relish from food; soon, it was turning sick at the sight of it.

* * * * *

A special delivery came from Armstrong Monday night. It was a teletype he had torn right off the machine and rushed to me.

IDENTIFICATION MADE AS HECTOR PILON. AGED 34. DOCTORATE IN GEOLOGY, COLUMBIA U. SPECIALIST IN RADIOACTIVE ORES. MEMBER OF COMMISSION NOW CHECKING URANIUM DEPOSITS IN CONGO. WAS PRESENT IN U.S. DURING PERIOD QUERIED.

There was a hastily written post-script. "_Will arrange passport, plane passage, etc., for you. Draw some money from bank for expenses. Armstrong._"

My heart pounded. The Congo! The site of the world's richest uranium deposits, it would be just the natural workshop for Chetzisky.

Perhaps, I mused, trying to reason out a pattern, this fellow Pilon discovered or heard of a new ore find in, say, the jungle area east of the famous Katanga district, and told Chetzisky about it.

Of course, I admitted to myself, there was the problem of how the Doctor could get equipment into the area unnoticed. But maybe the answer lay in what Chetzisky had said to Chaslington; maybe there was no equipment problem. Who could tell but that Chetzisky may have found a simplified method of handling and working radioactive ores? He had told Chaslington our present methods were utterly outmoded, hadn't he?

It took Armstrong nearly a week to arrange for my trip to the Belgian Congo. He sent cables to Belgian officials at Leopoldville and to George Disney, chief of the commission with which Pilon was working, inviting their cooperation. In this way he hoped that the prestige of his title and name would lend a semi-official tone to my mission.

Meanwhile, Nevil Oxford phoned me twice, inquiring about our search for Chetzisky. His voice betrayed his uneasiness.

On the morning of my departure from Idlewild the _New York Times_, as if given confirmation to our conjectures, carried a front page story announcing a new uranium deposit in the Katanga area. Two university scientists who assayed samples stated the ore was among the highest grade yet discovered. Yield about three kilograms per ton.