The Second Half of POWER



ON THE WAY out I had to support Anna when she fainted at the sight of 
Bittsworth's dead body lying on the floor of a short corridor leading to the 
lower floors.
Anna's laboratory, which occupied a whole building, was located just north of 
West 4th Street. From the outside, it was a very ordinary appearing house of the 
type found usually in the Village. Certainly no one would have suspected it of 
containing machinery capable of laying waste the whole continent.
The garage was empty. Seeking to secure as much secrecy as possible, Westhoff 
ordered the cars parked in the shadowed drive. Then, at pistol point, he drove 
us into the house.
It was empty. My father, who assisted Anna in completing her experiments, was 
not home. We snapped on the lights. My garish choice of furniture, Bohemian and 
loud, became embarrassingly obvious. Westhoff and De Saynter sneered.
"Decadence," remarked the former. "Useless luxury. The people must be made to do 
without. We need strong men and strong women, simple men and women. The old 
virtues of self-denial and fortitude must come back. This barbaric comfort must 
go."
"Somehow, that doesn't fit into my conception of an age of atomic power," I 
remarked off-handedly.
"Not too hasty, not too rash, Gunther," breathed De Saynter. "These people are 
friends. They must be treated as friends. Please do not begin by criticising 
their tastes in furniture. Or betraying the program of the party," he said 
suddenly and viciously.
Westhoff winced.
"Let us proceed," continued De Saynter. "Up those stairs and through the door. I 
know about this house. I once worked here, did I not, Miss Campbell?"
Anna, who was staggering wearily up the steps, nodded. Her eyes, hopeless, saw 
nothing.
We passed through the door to the big laboratory.
EVERY TIME I'd been there in the past, I was amazed at the power of the 
machinery Anna put together with her two capable hands. I had seen it many times 
before. But now, the scene took on added significance. Westhoff was affected 
visibly. The array of metal, glass and insulation puzzled him. And the guards 
glanced uneasily about. Out of their party uniforms, they were not so brave or 
assured.
De Saynter made an exclamation of pleasure.
"Ah, I see that you have completed the magnetic reflector, Miss Campbell. I was 
about to suggest that particular method when you discharged me. The wiring is 
very workmanlike."
His eyes wandered caressingly over the apparatus. In them now was something more 
than the greed for power. But it did not last very long. Presently he turned to 
us again.
"Perhaps you have been wondering why I have not built this machine myself. I 
bow, Anna Campbell, to your superior technical knowledge. Even the best of the 
European experts--or the American, for that matter, have not gone a tenth as far 
as have you, here. You have the ability to foresee difficulties and overcome 
them before they arise. I, in my stumbling way, could, perhaps do as well in 
time. But there is no time now."
Westhoff seated himself at a switch-board, uneasily. His hands wandered idly 
over switches and levers.
"Verboten, fuehrer," said De Saynter, gently. Westhoff snatched his hands away, 
abashed.
De Saynter gestured to the two guards who had followed us upstairs. Side arms 
drawn, they stood against the door.
"Well, shall we get on?" grumbled the tall Nazi.
"Patience, fuehrer. Nothing can be accomplished by sheer haste. Do you imagine 
that this girl is going to give us the knowledge we seek without a corresponding 
value being placed in her hands? No, she will not. Anna," he said suddenly, "I 
think we both understand each other. We need information you possess. I am aware 
that only the most extreme torture could force you to reveal what we want to 
know. Such a procedure would be distasteful to me. I am not a barbarian. I am 
prepared, therefore, to offer you a cold business deal. Here," he said, 
indicating, with a sweep of his arm, the atom-smashing apparatus, "we have 
power. Dead power. It has little meaning once it has accomplished its task. In 
human relations, only personal power has any meaning. All other power is merely 
a means to that end."
Anna sneered.
"What are you going to offer me? The queenship of the American Empire? Sorry, De 
Saynter, but it's a bit old-fashioned."
"lt is a bit thick, you know," I said, chuckling. "Why don't you stop being so 
damned old-hat?"
Westhoff snarled, but De Saynter merely smiled.
"Dear me," he said, throwing up his arms in a gesture of defeat. "You are going 
to be difficult. So we are going to take at one jump the sublime to the 
ridiculous?" He regarded Anna with an amused, baffled glint in his eyes.
I decided then that it was about time to act. They hadn't bound me and the 
guards paid no attention to my occasional sallies about the room. So I 
maneuvered myself to a spot well-known to me and leaned heavily and nonchalantly 
on a metal shelf for support. Behind me, a signal switch closed softly, without 
a sound.
"I SUPPOSE THERE is no possibility of your reconsidering your decision?" asked 
De Saynter, lighting a cigarette. He blew the smoke ceilingward, where it 
collected about the brilliant light globes in swirling ropes.
Anna's face was grimly uncompromising.
"I see no reason for putting this secret into the hands of a stupid fool."
De Saynter's eyes narrowed. He pulled his revolver from his coat pocket and 
brandished it.
"Enough! I see now that direct action is the only course to take. To think I 
could have been so wrong about feminine psychology!"
They jumped me as soon as De Saynter stopped talking because I was getting all 
ready to spring on the little man. Tying me to a chair with some copper wire, 
they stepped back and grabbed Anna roughly.
Westhoff licked his lips. He stood up abruptly and fondled his revolver holster.
De Saynter directed the guards to tie Anna to another chair. Then they stepped 
back out of the way. The former assistant stepped to a small, projector-like 
contrivance bolted to the floor, looking very much like a car-headlight before 
they began putting them into the fenders, and swung the business end of it 
around. I recognized it immediately. It threw a powerful stream of electrons 
past its magnetic regulator into the secondary stages of the amplifers, and was 
extremely dangerous. With full power, it could have burned to a cinder anything 
that got in its path. Ordinarily, a heavy metal safety shield surrounded it, but 
the shield and its heavy bolts lay on the floor beside the machine. Evidently my 
father had been repairing it, I thought.
Anna's eyes widened with horror as she saw De Saynter walk to the control panel 
and throw several small levers. Instantly, the lights dimmed as the powerful 
transformers began eating up tremendous amounts of house-current. The stolid 
guards blinked uncomfortably as the lights flickered.
De Saynter crushed out his cigarette carelessly against the base of the 
projector.
"The stream of electrons passing through this tube, with sufficient power, is 
capable of eating through steel almost instantaneously," he remarked absently, 
to no one in particular.
Westhoff shivered.
"In three minutes, the accumulated energy building up in the primary stage will 
leap through this projector and destroy anything in its path. Observe, Anna 
Campbell, how I bring this tube directly in line with your head. Observe how I 
disconnect the safety switch and adjust the timers. It is a beautiful piece of 
machinery and it is a pity that it should be used to such purpose. I want your 
answer as to the location of the plans for this entire apparatus within three 
minutes. I do not propose to tear the house down to find them."
One minute passed. I gulped.
Anna's nervous reserve was giving out. Her eyes, already wide and staring into 
the mouth of the electron projector, grew luminous with sheer horror.
"Anna!" I cried, suddenly. "Tell him! Anna, please! Please! It doesn't matter 
now whether he knows or not. Anna!"
Her lips trembled. De Saynter smiled queerly. He patted his stomach.
And then Westhoff bellowed.
"LOOK OUT!" he cried to the guards as the door behind them was thrust open and a 
searing blast of energy shot across the room, catching De Saynter below the neck 
and blowing most of his head into nothingness. Westhoff pulled desperately at 
his pistol, raised it, fired point-blank at the doorway and succeeded in killing 
one of his own men. The other toppled over as another searing blast caught him 
in the middle.
"Good boys!" I yelled and threw myself, chair and all, at Anna. She went over 
with a crash and a few seconds later the faintly luminous power surge poured 
through the empty air and crashed into the back wall where it volatilized the 
lead lining of the wall before a final blast from the doorway cut off the power 
supply as it hit the main cable.
Anna had fainted.
We revived her several minutes later. She blinked uncomprehendingly as she saw 
me standing over her, surrounded by two dozen men attired in ordinary grey 
business suits, each holding tightly to what appeared to be a small pistol-grip 
flashlight with wires leading from the butt to a large flat package in one 
pocket of their jackets.
For a woman weakened by a terrific shock she showed astonishing comprehension.
"Hand-rays?" she murmured, and I nodded.
She took a cigarette and some brandy downstairs, later.
"What the devil is it all about, darling?" she asked. Sitting opposite her, in 
the library, in my favorite overstuffed, I sprang it on her whimsically, feeling 
a little melodramatic.
"You are looking, my dear, at the head of the New York Section of the new 
Scientific Government of the United States!"
"Whatever that is, I don't believe you," she said, crossing one knee over the 
other.
"You'd better. I haven't told you anything up to now because I didn't want you 
going off half-cocked. You've been in a hell of a nervous state the past few 
months from your work on that junk upstairs, and--"
"Don't talk nonsense. I still don't believe you," she interrupted.
I laughed out loud.
"All right. Who's the second best chemical engineer and general electrical 
genius in this country next to yourself?"
"Why--why--why you are. So what?"
I gazed at her in amazement.
"So the woman I love and spend most of my time with goes and invents atomic 
power and I'm supposed to do nothing but play the tired technician who's too 
rusty to help around stuff like this any more, and take you out to dinner and 
golf and boat-rides and hikes?"
"You've been doing all right," she said seductively.
"Our little organization has been in existence for quite a while. Oh, I beg your 
pardon; Anna, meet the boys. Boys meet Anna." The "boys" inclined their heads, 
"We haven't been blind to the economic and social breakdown in this country. 
Your invention was a godsend. I don't know what we'd have done without it. I 
filched the plans you hid in the old safe behind the furnace--they're back, now, 
though--and gave them to a bunch of our boys down at headquarters--most of 'em 
are good mechanics, with some geniuses and a few research men thrown in. They 
turned out hand guns patterned after the principle of that projector.... By the 
way, remind me to have that wall fixed, like a good little girl.... And tiny 
automobiles that run for years and years on a thimbleful of fuel, and airplanes 
that don't need winds or propellers, and a lot of other useful gadgets. Add 
everything up and you've got all the necessary props for a scientific state. No 
nonsense, no baloney. Just science."
"Where were they hiding?" she asked, indicating my bravos.
"They weren't hiding. They were downtown at General Headquarters. You don't know 
it yet, but the city is full of them, all set to go. I managed to get through an 
alarm signal I rigged up. You don't know anything about that, either. I seldom 
forget a possibility."
"I know," she remarked somewhat sarcastically, then smiled. "But where are they 
going now?"
"We're taking over," I stated definitely and looked to the squad leader for 
confirmation. He nodded vigorously. "You just be content to be the human being 
responsible for all this and collect the glory."
She stretched luxuriously and took another slug of brandy.
"What'll that be? Some gold statues in public parks?"
I grinned.
"Say," she said suddenly, struck by a thought, "where's your father?"
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small machine resembling a wrist 
watch. Only it was flat and rectangular and had no crystal in it.
"This is a small receiver-transmitter. One of the gadgets the boys thought up. 
You can talk to pop by simply pressing that little white stud. He's down at GHQ 
now."
"Wait a minute, darling. One hour ago we got a free ride downtown. New York was 
a howling mess. And so was the rest of the country. What are you going to do 
about that?"
I stood up and accepted a proffered hand-ray-gun.
"That's what we're going to take care of now. Everything has been arranged for a 
direct assault on the population with the most beautiful information machine you 
ever saw. Sound trucks, picture slides, television movies and free ice-cream. By 
midnight tomorrow, the country--the whole continent--will be out of the danger 
zone. Politics is through once and for all. It'll be democracy, all right. 
Democracy with a nice clean shirt on and lipstick and bobbed hair and nylon 
stockings. Only this time the nylon won't ever wear out."
I stopped and kissed her.
Presently one of the men lifted his wrist receiver to his ear.
"All set, sir," he said.
"O.K., let's get going."
Anne was still unconvinced. She called after me from the couch.
"I still think it's a deuce of a big job. What's the magic trick that'll put it 
over? What wand are you planning to use?"
"Power," I said, and walked out.



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